Carer’s Allowance

Barbara Keeley Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this important debate with you in the Chair, Mrs Cummins, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Christina Rees) on leading it.

For years, many charities, campaigners and carers have called for wide-ranging reform of carer’s allowance. The petition that we are debating focuses specifically on how much carer’s allowance should offer carers, so I will begin my contribution by addressing the financial pressures that carers face.

Carers UK estimates that over a quarter of carers live in poverty, which rises to nearly half of those who care for someone for more than 35 hours a week. Often, people in receipt of carer’s allowance face particularly difficult financial situations. The poverty rate for people in receipt of carer’s allowance has doubled in the last decade and a survey by Carers UK shows that 45% of people receiving carer’s allowance struggle to make ends meet, which is a significant increase on the previous year.

The causes of financial difficulty for carers are frequently linked to their caring responsibilities. Of course, carers face additional costs, which are unavoidable, to keep the person whom they care for safe. Such costs can include vital but high-energy equipment, the costs of additional laundry and bathing needs, and transport costs for visits to medical appointments.

As we have already heard in the debate, carers also have a limited ability to earn an income. If they are in receipt of carer’s allowance, they can earn only £151 before losing that benefit. This month, the earnings threshold for claiming carer’s allowance increased below the national living wage, which means that carers on the lowest wages will have to cut back their hours to just over 13 hours a week or risk losing the benefit. For some, this will be the equivalent of losing 13 days of work a year, which is a substantial loss. In addition, as we have already heard but it bears repeating, there is an issue for carers in full-time education—young carers—because they lose eligibility for carer’s allowance when they study for more than 21 hours a week. Therefore, many young people are excluded from support.

Those eligibility requirements and others limit the support that carers can receive through carer’s allowance. Most importantly, however, around 34% of carers in receipt of carer’s allowance are still in poverty. Clearly, carer’s allowance is failing to give enough financial support to the people who provide unpaid care to others. It is ridiculous for the Government to claim in response to the petition that they

“recognise the invaluable contribution that unpaid and family carers make”,

given that so many carers clearly do not receive the support they need.

The petition that we are debating today focuses on the amount available for carers through carer’s allowance, but there are other issues that warrant our concern. A particularly worrying problem that we have already heard about is the recent reporting of overpayments of carer’s allowance and the subsequent repayment penalties. As we have heard, poor systems or poor processes at the Department of Work and Pensions have resulted in 145,000 current cases of overpayments to unpaid carers, with 12,000 of those being for sums greater than £5,000. As has been reported in the press recently, that has resulted in thousands of carers running up huge debts, being given criminal records, and being forced to sell their own homes when chased by the DWP over small mistakes that officials could have spotted years earlier. For example, George Henderson, the carer of his adult son John, who has a learning disability, was overpaid £110 and ended up being prosecuted for benefit fraud by the Department for Work and Pensions, despite the Department admitting that his was an innocent mistake. He was forced to sell his house and threatened monthly with jail. Then he tried to take his own life. Mr Henderson told The Mirror:

“One night I’d had a drink and I put a noose up in the loft…My girlfriend rang the Crisis team and I was under them for four months. They wouldn’t let me live alone. I lost four stone as I couldn’t eat, I look at photos from that time and you can see my ribcage.”

The repercussions of that time continue to affect Mr Henderson, and he is now waiting to undergo therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder. Sadly, there are many other carers like Mr Henderson. One carer told Carers UK:

“The whole process had my wife so stressed out that she at several points contemplated suicide. She couldn’t see an end to it and as it turned out we didn’t end up owing the DWP anything.”

Carers have described suffering an avalanche of utter stress due to the Government’s claiming back of these benefits. This is not about mistakes or misunderstandings by carers, as we have heard; this is about administrative failures at the DWP and harsh penalties for people whom the Government should be trying to support. There must be a change to the processing around carer’s allowance to alleviate the acute distress and financial hardship that overpayments can cause; otherwise, we will see many more serious headlines. It is reported that one in three unpaid carers has thought about killing themselves due to the emotional and financial strain they are under. That is disturbing. It is also disturbing that it is not known how many carers have already been driven to suicide, because caring status is not part of the data collected after such a death.

It is unacceptable, in my view, that the Government have let this mismanagement of carer’s allowance processes go on for so long. Both the Work and Pensions Committee and the National Audit Office warned of this situation five years ago, yet the number of overpayments today remains just as high. I am glad that Labour has committed to reviewing the system of carer’s allowance and would look to reform DWP policy on carer’s allowance but now that these issues are really being exposed, carers should not have to wait for a general election to see action. The Government must sort out the mess urgently so that unpaid carers are no longer penalised for the vital care they offer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mims Davies]

Yes, indeed. I was supportive of that myself, attending where possible to support that legislation going through. The Government absolutely welcome the cross-party work the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) did piloting that, and congratulations to her.

On the specific subject of the debate, we are spending record amounts to support unpaid carers. Real-terms expenditure for carer’s allowance is forecast to be £4.1 billion in 2024-25 and by 2028-29 the Government are forecast to spend over £4.5 billion a year on carer’s allowance. We spend another £685 million to support carers receiving universal credit through the carer element.

As mentioned today, patterns of care have changed significantly over the past decade. People are providing vital unpaid care to relatives and friends in a whole range of circumstances that work for all concerned, but I also recognise that none of this is easy. Nearly one million people now receive carer’s allowance, and the weekly rate increased this month to £81.90. That means that since 2010 it has increased from £53.90 to £81.90 a week, providing an additional £1,500 a year to carers through the carer’s allowance compared with 2010. Of course, there are additional amounts for carers in universal credit and other ways forward, and it is important that those watching and those who maybe have not had this conversation are aware of those and come forward to get the support they need. That also can be through the household support fund. We know that unexpected outgoings happen, and people should reach out through their local authority and through Barnett consequentials. I know that that has been an important support mechanism for carers.

The crux of the petition we have been debating is that we should turn carer’s allowance into a carer’s wage. It is important to emphasise that the carer’s allowance is not intended to be a replacement for a wage or a payment for services of caring, hence some of the issues rightly raised today. It is therefore not directly comparable to either the national minimum wage or the national living wage. The principal purpose of the carer’s allowance as it stands, and under successive Governments since 1976, is to provide a measure of financial support and recognition for people who are not able to work full time because of their caring responsibilities. I reiterate that I welcome the debate and the opportunity to review and understand these issues. Successive Governments have supported carers through allowances and benefits, as well as wider cross-Government actions, rather than paying people directly for the tasks they undertake in the way that an employer would.

[Barbara Keeley]

I want to raise something that has not been raised in the debate and ask the Minister a question. She refuted the point that the Government do not recognise the contribution of carers, but many carers believe that the Government should have, and are missing, a national carers strategy. Such a strategy was launched by the Labour Government, with the backing of our former Prime Ministers, and was ditched by the coalition Government after 2010. Much of what we have covered is about a range of issues that would be better solved with a cross-party ministerial commitment, going up to prime ministerial level, on a national carers strategy. An excellent campaigner, Katy Styles, who has been mentioned in this debate, runs the We Care Campaign for that very thing. It is a real black hole in the Government’s support for carers that there is no national carers strategy. Will the Minister address that?

[Mims Davies]

I thank the hon. Lady for making that point. The right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) took us back nearly two decades to 2008, the year that he was Minister of State in the Department holding the welfare reform portfolio. This is not new; this is challenging. The hon. Lady makes an important point, to which I will try to reply in my wider remarks. When we discuss this issue at the Select Committee, I am keen to get to the crux of all the challenges, but that is too wide a subject for this debate.

The hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) talked about benefit delays and the challenge of the long-standing principle that the carer’s allowance can being awarded only once a decision has been made to trigger a disability benefit to the person being cared for. Carer’s allowance can be backdated, however, to the date from which the disability is payable. I believe about 100,000 people are on PIP and the carer’s allowance. I hope that goes some way to answering her questions.

The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows), with her characteristic approach, raised the work being done in Scotland. We will look fully and with interest at the evaluation of the changes that the Scottish Government make. At the DWP, we are supporting those changes, so we will engage on them. That also goes to the earlier point about looking and learning, which is exactly what we should do.

Many hon. Members spoke about young adult carers and the impact of study. We are engaging with the Department for Education and the cross-Government working group is meeting again soon. It is important that carers maintain links with the education system, so that they can receive part-time education and a carer’s allowance. We rightly recognise the aspirations of young carers to not only complete their studies and build a successful career, but be there for their loved one.

That is true not just for young carers: we need to ensure that carers understand that, while caring, they have developed amazing skills that an employer will find invaluable, such as managing finances, the resilience that has been spoken about today, dealing with crisis, organisation and planning, and that level of interpersonal skills. We need to ensure that our young people in particular get the financial support that they need while studying, so they can rightly progress into the career that they want.

On the latest data on overpayments, our most recent statistics are that carer’s allowance overpayments relating to earnings and employment represent about 2.1% of our £3.3 billion of carer’s allowance expenditure, which is approximately £70 million. I welcome the opportunity to discuss that further with the Select Committee later this week.