A damning review finds repeated Tory welfare failures pushed
unpaid carers into debt and distress, while wasting hundreds of millions in
public funds.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) found
"systemic issues" in its examination of carer's allowance benefit
overpayments, and it concluded that carers could not be held accountable for
breaking ambiguous and complex benefit regulations.
The inquiry was prompted by a Guardian investigation that
showed carers had been subjected to harsh fines of up to £20,000 for
inadvertently and unfairly exceeding their allowance.
The review's author, Liz Sayce, a specialist in disability
rights, claimed that issues with carers' allowances resulted in unfair use of
public funds and had an impact on carers' professions, finances, and health.
She attributed the issues to senior DWP officials' repeated inability to
address them over a ten-year period.
“Overpayments over many years at this scale and impact, with missed opportunities to resolve them, are entirely unacceptable. They are an inappropriate use of taxpayers’ money, which has involved using public money for a purpose not intended, and then incurring further cost to attempt to recover it,”
she wrote.
She added:
“The prevalence of overpayment related to earnings has been caused not by widespread individual error by carers in reporting their earnings but by systemic issues preventing them from fulfilling their responsibility to report.”
Ministers have declared that hundreds of thousands of unpaid
caregivers who accumulated overpayments due to risky choices will have their
cases reevaluated and, in many cases, their debts canceled or reduced. The
issue was referred to as a "mess inherited from the previous
government."
However, many caregivers are disappointed
that the evaluation did not suggest compensation for people whose lives were
completely upended and their health was ruined as a result of being penalized
for large overpayments they were not aware they had made.
The review focused on the stress, humiliation, and embarrassment that caregivers who were entangled in the system endured, as well as how DWP employees treated them,
"making them feel degraded, like a criminal or cheat trying to game the system."
The analysis also showed how caretakers quickly and
unintentionally accumulated large overpayments due to the poor "cliff
edge" design of carer's allowance penalties. Sayce called for "quick,
creative, and equitable solutions" to the issue.
As long as their weekly earnings from part-time occupations
do not surpass £196, unpaid caregivers who provide at least 35 hours of care
each week are eligible for £83.30 in carer's allowance. However, they have to
reimburse the full week's carer's payment if they go above this cap, even by
just 1p.
A person who exceeds the threshold by as little as 1p per
week for a year is required to return £4,331.60 in addition to a £50 civil
penalty under the "cliff edge" earnings guidelines.
DWP's 2020 modifications to the way carers were permitted to
average their earnings from part-time work in order to prevent overpayments
were also criticized.
According to the assessment, caregivers
"have no way of knowing exactly what they need to report and when"
because of unclear
regulations, even while the DWP required them to report changes to their
circumstances, such as if they earned more than earnings restrictions.
Sayce mentioned an unpaid caregiver who testified for the
review and explained the difficulties caregivers encounter when attempting to
use the carer's allowance system.
She praised the "invaluable" role that
journalists, DWP whistleblowers, caregivers' NGOs, and carers themselves played
in bringing the carer's allowance controversy to the forefront of policy.
“I hope this report will lead to concerted, accountable action to resolve the persistent – and repeatedly reported – problem of overpayment of carer’s allowance,”
she said.
How will the government implement Sayce review recommendations?
The government plans to apply the Sayce Review
recommendations by reassessing all Carer’s Allowance earnings- related
remittance cases and reducing or canceling debts where prepayments were set up
to be lower than firstly calculated. They will also reimburse any money
formerly repaid by overdue caregivers affected by confusing guidance in place
between 2015 and 2025.
Reviewing around 185,000 cases of caregivers who entered
Carer’s Allowance during the problematic period. streamlining internal DWP
guidance and hiring redundant staff to reuse earnings announcements instantly
to avoid unborn prepayments.
Government officers, including the Work and Pensions Secretary and Chancellor, have conceded the systemic failures inherited and expressed commitment to righting the wrongs endured by overdue caregivers over past years.