DWP warning as thousands of unpaid carers told to repay benefits

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has issued a warning as thousands of unpaid carers are told to repay the money from their benefits.

The government is trying to recover £250 million from 130,000 unpaid carers who unknowingly overpaid their allowance. A 2019 report warned this could happen, saying carers could be “heavily penalized for honest mistakes”, amid claims errors were not identified quickly enough by the DWP, the Daily Express reports.

Unpaid carers who look after someone for more than 35 hours a week are entitled to Carer’s Allowance from the DWP. On Thursday, the Work and Pensions Committee warned that “no progress has been made” in limiting the impact of the issues raised five years ago.

The committee also called on the DWP to “urgently improve” how it monitors and communicates overpayments.

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Sir Stephen Timms, chairman of the commission, said the government had “known for years” about the problems but “just allowed many unpaid carers to unwittingly accumulate unmanageable levels of debt”.

He said: “The DWP must now move without delay to understand the issue and ensure that carers are no longer subjected to the distress that such overpayments can cause.”

The latest figures, released by the DWP after a parliamentary question from Labor MP Sir Timms, show that more than twice as many women are in debt from overpayments, roughly in line with the proportion receiving Carer’s Allowance. The DWP has previously said that “claimants have a responsibility to inform the DWP of any change in their circumstances that could affect their award and it is only right that we recover taxpayers’ money when this has not happened”.

But carers said they were unaware they were over the earnings limit, only to be told years later they owed thousands.

Karina Moon, whose daughter Amber needs round-the-clock care, owes £11,000 after earning just over the claim limit at her part-time supermarket job. She has been paying back £60 a month for the past four years and will continue to pay for another 11.

Karina said: “They’re taking money from our income, it’s money that would help me drive the car, help me pay the bills, put food on the table.”

Gina Price, from Carmarthenshire in south-west Wales, looked after her father while working part-time at a petrol station. He now owes the DWP around £7,000 in overpayments and said the debt was a “huge blow”.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey, a carer himself, called for these debts to be written off. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) said it was “progressing an enhanced notification strategy” to alert carers to overpayments.

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