Conor Thackray, one of the carer’s allowance claimants who told his story about overpayments to the Guardian, referred to the Department for Work and Pensions as operating a “catch-out culture”. This phrase sums up what is wrong with the current system. The rule that any carer earning over £151 a week must forfeit the entirety of the allowance enabling them to care for a family member who is sick or disabled (and has been formally assessed as needing care) needs to be altered. Multiple tales of small, inadvertent infractions, resulting in sizeable debts and significant hardship, make a mockery of a benefit that is meant to help those in need.
Even more egregious than this inflexibility is the way that mistakes have been handled. Despite the existence of a mechanism to alert officials to potential breaches of the £151 limit, many carers have been allowed to keep on claiming without any warning or checks. Hence the situation where people are suddenly confronted with large bills for repayments. As our reporting has shown, those affected are not an unlucky handful. Hundreds of carers have been prosecuted and criminalised for breaches, while 134,500 are paying back £251m in earnings-related overpayments. This systemic failure is a disgrace that has been allowed to drag on for far too long. The work and pensions committee’s recommendations for change are five years old.
In total, around 1 million people claim carer’s allowance, the purpose of which is to enable them to look after loved ones instead of – or alongside – limited paid work. Eligibility requires them to be carers for at least 35 hours per week – making caring their main “job”. These are parents of disabled children, adult children of parents incapacitated in old age, and wives and husbands whose partners have become seriously ill.
Almost three-quarters of claimants are women, reflecting the wider reality that far more women than men are in familial primary carer roles. In many cases, the events leading to claims (accidents, diagnoses of terminal illness) are ones that most people would dread. But rather than treating these families with compassion, as humanity demands, the rules are rigid while enforcement is callous.
The new government has acknowledged the problem and said that it plans to fix it. The appointment to the relevant ministerial role of Stephen Timms, who chaired the work and pensions committee, is a sign of seriousness. On Monday, officials met with campaigners. But good intentions are not enough. The case for change is established: the cap is an international anomaly, and the ceiling on earnings should be lifted or changed to a limit on hours.
The challenges around care go beyond the reform of carer’s allowance. As is widely known, an outstanding one is funding. But there is also a cultural question around the value placed on this type of labour. One of the most perverse aspects of the current rules is the way that, by tightly restricting carers’ earnings, it pigeonholes them as unpaid workers. This has to change. Members of our society who take responsibility for looking after those who are ill, frail or disabled must be supported.