‘I was seen as a criminal’: The carers targeted by DWP over accidental payments ...Middle East

Thousands of carers were forced out of work after incurring vast debts from benefits overpayments, the head of a damning review into the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has told The i Paper.

Liz Sayce led a review into the department’s failure to address overpayments of carer’s allowance, received by people who are unable to work full-time due to their caring duties.

Those providing care for at least 35 hours a week are entitled to the benefit, which amounts to a weekly payment of £83.30.

But carers are only entitled to the allowance if their weekly earnings do not exceed £196, with the DWP’s “cliff-edge” rules meaning that anyone exceeding this limit – even by 1p – must repay the entire week’s allowance.

Many, who did not realise they earned more than the allowance, faced large bills, with some carers choosing to give up the benefit.

One such person who did this – and decided to stay in work – is Elizabeth Tait, 60, from Elmbridge, Surrey.

Ms Tait told The i Paper that she was ordered to repay more than £1,600 after she exceeded the earnings limit while caring for her husband, who suffered from bowel cancer, and her son, who has Down’s syndrome.

She said she took up work as a way to “pay bills and put food on the table” while her husband, David, was unwell.

“I was worried about bills, I was worried about the money, but I didn’t realise carer’s allowance had this cliff-end,” she added.

“When you’re caring, you’re not always in a good place mentally. It’s so stressful. You’re always battling a system – especially with my disabled child.”

After inadvertently earning more than the DWP’s limit, Ms Tait said she was ordered to pay back £1,623. She appealed against the decision, raising the matter with a tribunal judge, but was ultimately ordered to repay the amount.

“I was seen as a criminal because I had taken this carer’s allowance,” she said. “I am not someone that’s taking from the state or living on benefits – I was trying to work.

“So you’re in a situation where it’s not your fault, but you’re made to feel guilty.

“There’s no understanding that when you’re caring, you’re exhausted and you’re not always thinking straight. And that was my case.”

Ms Tait’s husband died in 2018, meaning she has since cared for her son, Oliver, 22, on her own.

She recently applied for carer’s allowance after she was in “meltdown fighting the council” to secure more adult care provision for Oliver so she can return to work. But she told The i Paper that she aims to come off the benefit after her experience going to court left her “terrified”.

“I’m trying to work and care for my son 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,” she said. “It’s going to be £350 [less each month]. Although that doesn’t sound like a lot of money, it makes the difference for hospital car parks, living costs and my ability to take him out and do things with him.

“But I’d rather not have the money than go through that experience of going to court.”

Sayce’s review, published last week, found that the strict earnings threshold had landed hundreds of thousands of carers in debt through no fault of their own, but rather as a result of “systemic” issues at the DWP.

Speaking to The i Paper, Sayce said the DWP failed to heed warnings about the damaging impact of carer’s allowance overpayments issued in 2019, in two separate reports by the National Audit Office and Work and Pensions Select Committee.

“There hadn’t been an overarching plan with concerted leadership to make sure this problem was fixed,” she said. “That was very noticeable.”

She added that although the DWP was legally required to average carers’ weekly income over a longer period, rather than punish any breaches of its earnings limit in a single week, the guidance was rarely followed.

“If it had been really clear to people how their earnings would be averaged, far fewer people would have gone over that limit,” she said.

“That was made worse by two things: firstly, the cliff-edge, and secondly the fact that often people did not hear about the overpayment for a long time afterwards, by which time the debt had built up.”

Sayce, who previously served as chief executive of Disability Rights UK, said the overpayments created “terrible problems around disincentives to employment” and amounted to “an obstacle to people combining caring and unpaid work”.

She explained that carers often could not work enough to pay rent due to their caring duties, but if they worked part-time, they risked exceed the earnings limit.

“We talked to people who were qualified nurses or teachers who had taken very basic-paid jobs way below their qualifications because there was no other way of making ends meet and paying the rent,” she said.

Her review aimed to help people write off unfair debts and change the system going forwards.

“If people were faced with a supposed overpayment and it was deemed that they knew, or should have known, and hadn’t alerted the DWP, then in many cases they were also fined,” she added.

“They were given a civil penalty of £50. People said again and again, that was the last straw – an insult.”

Following the publication of her review, Sayce said the DWP was looking into a “taper” that would replace the current cliff-edge rules.

The taper would mean those making more than the DWP’s limit would face a deduction in their carer’s allowance equal to or less than the amount of additional earnings, rather than the full benefit.

The department has said it will reassess 145,000 cases of carer’s allowance overpayments, with some of those debts likely to be cancelled or reimbursed.

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Figures released as part of the Chancellor’s Budget last week also showed that ministers have earmarked £75m from 2026 to address the issues raised by the review.

Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden said: “Carers are vital to our communities, and when the system lets them down, we have a duty to put it right.”

Sayce said: “This is quite unprecedented, that the Government has said they are going to reassess and, where needed, repay debts, write off debts, and write off those civil penalties. I hope carers will take some sort of solace from that.”

Dan White, policy and campaigns officer at Disability Rights UK, said: “There is a long, protracted history of the DWP not only failing people, but of being obtuse, difficult to navigate, cruel and guilty of ignorance.”

He called on the Government to “invest in and support unpaid carers across the country, carers whose numbers, like their poverty, increases daily”.

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