The DWP is snatching back an astonishing quarter of a billion pounds from claimants who have been overpaid carer’s allowance, DWP minister Paul Maynard has admitted. At the same time, a report into carer’s allowance which the department has fought to keep secret for years has finally been published.
Although the DWP is alerted by HMRC when a carer goes over the earnings limit, they ignore more than half of these alerts, leaving carers to run up massive, and entirely avoidable overpayments.
According to Maynard, the DWP is currently recovering £251 million from 134,800 carers. This averages out at almost £1,900 per claimants, though some owe a great deal more.
68% of all those hit with an overpayment recovery are female.
Elsewhere, the DWP have finally been forced to publish a report, “Experience of claiming and receiving Carer’s Allowance”, that was given to ministers in 2021. Since then, they have resisted calls from MPs and freedom of information requests asking for the report to be made public.
The report proves that ministers knew about the carer’s allowance overpayment scandal for years but did nothing about it.
Even though only 3% of the people interviewed for the report had been subject to overpayment recovery, much lower than the real level of overpayments, it was clear that many didn’t understand how the overpayment came about or what would happen. As one respondent said:
“[Our UC] was reduced by £90, and he had to send a message to his journal asking because nobody could explain it over the phone. Then he received a message back saying it was overpayment on the carer's side, so that was quite annoying that we just found out when we were due money.”
Another claimant was completely in the dark, even after being contacted by the DWP:
“I was very stressed about it, asking in theory for money back, but it was case of wait and see if the next letter would come so as I never heard I assume they don’t want it paid back but I don’t know still to this day.”
One claimant was very angry at being treated like a fraudster when they had honestly misunderstood the complex rules around earnings:
“I fought hammer and nail on it. I felt it was a real victimisation. They don't think... It's like you're dealing with a computer not a person. I ended up with a big overpayment, but it totally wasn't my fault. It's like they don't believe you.”
You can download “Experience of claiming and receiving Carer’s Allowance” from this link.
You can read Paul Maynard’s statement on carer’s allowance overpayments here.
