DWP re-examines hundreds of thousands of cases in care allowance scandal | Company

The cases of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable, unpaid carers are being reassessed after a damning official review concluded they were left with huge debts due to government failures and maladministration.

The review, due to be published on Tuesday, was launched after a year Guardian investigation revealed that carers were hit with draconian penalties of up to £20,000 in relation to carer’s allowance. Some were in distress, others were imprisoned.

Ministers have vowed to remove or reduce wrongly imposed penalties after the review concluded many of them were the result of administrative errors rather than “deliberate breaches of the rules”.

However, the government has refrained from offering compensation to those affected. Compensation is understood to have been considered as part of the review and by ministers, but is not among the published recommendations of the review, which is led by disability policy expert Liz Sayce.

The stress, illness and fears of carers, who fell into debt and hardship due to the loss of care allowances, occurred in a series of Guardian articles in the last 20 months. Many carers said they were harassed and treated like criminals by DWP staff. Hundreds were convicted of welfare fraud.

It remains unclear what happens to nurses who are convicted of benefit fraud due to official misconduct.

Pat McFadden, the social welfare minister, said it was important to make amends for past mistakes to restore trust in unpaid carers. “We inherited this mess from the previous government, but we have listened to carers, commissioned an independent review and are now ensuring redress for those affected,” he said.

Ministers are understood to have accepted the vast majority of the review’s 40 recommendations. Sayce welcomed the Government’s promise to review all care allowance overpayments since 2015, saying the policy had a “significant impact on carers’ health, finances and family wellbeing”.

The reassessment of overpayments is likely to focus on those whose weekly or monthly earnings fluctuated and who were penalized even though their “average” total earnings over a given period were within the allowable earnings limits.

Unpaid carers who look after their loved ones for at least 35 hours a week are entitled to weekly carer’s allowance of £83.30, provided their weekly income from part-time jobs does not exceed £196. But if they go over this limit, even by just 1p, they will have to pay back the entire week’s care allowance.

Under the so-called “cliff edge” earnings rules, this means that if someone exceeds the threshold by just 1p a week for a year, they will have to pay back not 52p but £4,331.60, plus a civil penalty of £50.

The draconian penalties were compounded by the DWP’s failure to warn carers who exceeded the weekly earnings limit, despite having access to near real-time data. This meant that in some cases the overpayments accumulated over years before unwitting carers were handed large bills.

At least two cases before the Social Security Court this year have ruled in favor of nursing staff. Andrea Tucker And Nicola Green Overpayment penalties were scrapped after successfully arguing that their part-time monthly income averaged over a year was legitimate. This suggests that DWP guidance on the treatment of variable returns since 2020 has been flawed.

Echoing the language of a 2019 report by MPs that found breaches of the rules were largely human error rather than fraud, Sayce said: “This was not a deliberate breach of the rules – it was simply not clear what income fluctuations carers should report.”

The failure to offer compensation to carers whose lives have been turned into a nightmare of debt and fear as a result of DWP failures will disappoint many carers.

Skip the newsletter advertising

after newsletter advertising

One told the Guardian: “Many carers have suffered a lot of stress and concern because of this. Their health has been damaged as a result. It should be more than just a matter of canceling or reducing some overpayments.”

Carers UK welcomed the report as a “major step forward” which recognized “the severity of system failures” within the DWP. Its chief executive Helen Walker praised the government’s commitment to “righting the wrongs of the last ten years”.

Kirsty McHugh, chief executive of Carers Trust, said: “As the review makes clear, the DWP’s guidance on overpayments was both wrong and confusing. It was a major mistake, dating back a decade, that led to countless carers being wrongly believed to have received too much carer’s allowance.”

“We are pleased that the DWP has taken this seriously and listened to both carers and the services that support them.”

Katy Styles, from the We Care Campaign, said: “If the Sayce review finally ensures carers can apply for carer’s allowance with confidence, it won’t be a small change, it’ll be justice.”

“If the government can achieve this, it will be a huge win for people who have carried so much for far too long. Care workers deserve certainty, not constant fear.”

The DWP’s repeated failure to address the design of carer’s allowance despite repeated warnings, not least internally from a civil servant whistleblower, and administrative failings caused public outrage last year and became known as the carer’s allowance scandal. It has often been compared to the postal scandal.

At least 144,000 unpaid carers are currently paying back more than £251 million in overpayments, with the total amount included in carers’ allowance wrongly paid out estimated at more than £357m by DWP since 2019.