Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of the carers' allowance.

This Government continues to protect the value of benefits paid to carers whilst also spending record amounts in real terms.

The level of Carer’s Allowance is protected by uprating it each April in line with inflation as measured by the CPI for the previous September. The purpose of benefit uprating is to ensure that the value of benefits stays in line with the general level of prices. From April 2021, the Carer’s Allowance payment was increased to £67.60. Since 2010, the rate of Carer’s Allowance has increased from £53.90 to £67.60 a week, providing an additional £700 a year for carers.

Between 2021/22 and 2025/26 real terms expenditure on Carer’s Allowance is forecast to increase by nearly a third (around £0.8 billion). By 2025/26, the Government is forecast to spend just over £4bn a year on Carer’s Allowance.

As well as Carer’s Allowance, carers have access to the full range of social security benefits. For example, carers on Universal Credit can receive around an additional £1,950 a year through the Carer Element. Carers receiving Universal Credit may also benefit from the temporary £20 a week increase in the Universal Credit standard allowance. Due to the temporary Covid-19 uplift, around 300,000 carer households receiving Universal Credit benefitted from an additional £1,040 during the 20/21 financial year. So this Government has chosen to focus extra support on those carers who need it most.