Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many overpayments of Carer’s Allowance there have been in relation to the earnings conditions in each of the last 10 years.

Table 1 details the number of live Carer’s Allowance overpayments the department is seeking to recover, by the value brackets requested, as of 1^st February 2023.

Table 1 - Note: Data is for England, Wales and Scotland only, and represents overpayments held with balances greater than £0.00.

Table 2 details the number of overpayments of Carer’s Allowance for the last available year (2022/23) where the reason for overpayment was recorded as earnings over the Carer’s Allowance limit. The actual amount of earnings received is not captured. The bandwidths used therefore relate to the amount overpaid.

Table 2 - Note: Data includes devolved overpayments from Scotland but excludes Northern Ireland.

Table 3 details the number of overpayments of Carer’s Allowance there have been in relation to the earnings conditions for the past 5 years.

Going further back, the data excludes overpayments fully repaid – details of which are archived after 14 months and fully deleted after 7 years, which does not allow for a true figure to be calculated. Data includes devolved overpayments from Scotland.

Table 3