Pressure grows on DWP over ‘misleading’ response to carer’s allowance scandal | Carers

Senior officials overseeing a flawed benefits system that has left hundreds of thousands of carers in debt are under increasing pressure over their “misleading” response to the scandal.

Prof Liz Sayce, chair of the harsh review into the government’s treatment of unpaid carers, last week called for an overhaul of management and culture at the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).

Days after the review was published, Neil Couling, the DWP’s senior officer for carer’s pay, said carers themselves were at fault for a decade of failures.

His comments, revealed by the Guardian, led a key adviser to the Sayce review and a leading carers charity to declare they had no confidence in the department’s commitment to tackling the problems.

Prof Sue Yeandle, the UK’s leading expert on unpaid carers, said ministers and senior officials were making “genuinely misleading” claims that the failures only affected a small number of people.

Helen Walker, chief executive of Carers UK, said: “This is not a small number of people. The scale of this and the devastation it has caused so many families cannot be overestimated, as Liz Sayce’s report makes clear. Any suggestion that this is anything other than a systemic failure over several years is unacceptable.”

Yeandle, who sat on the advisory panel of the government-commissioned Sayce review, said that while ministers initially claimed they accepted the “vast majority” of the report’s 40 recommendations, 13 were only partially accepted and two were rejected.

“Sayce is calling for swift action on long-standing issues, some of which the DWP should have addressed a long time ago,” Yeandle said, adding that he was speaking personally.

He said: “The official response and internal DWP memo published last weekend does not give me much confidence that senior officials will now address these issues with the urgency and determination needed.”

Last month ministers vowed to fix systemic failings after a Guardian investigation revealed how scores of vulnerable families were left facing huge debts and hundreds were facing criminal convictions for fraud.

The DWP’s most senior civil servant, Peter Schofield, faces de facto oversight of the crisis, despite promising MPs the problem would be resolved in 2019. He told MPs on the public accounts committee earlier this month: “I’m sorry for everyone affected by this but I will sort this out.”

Those who care for a loved one for at least 35 hours a week are entitled to a carer’s allowance of £83.30 per week, provided their weekly earnings do not exceed £196. But if carers exceed this limit, even by as little as 1p, they must pay back the full week’s allowance.

The draconian nature of the rules is compounded by the DWP’s failure to warn unpaid carers when they exceed the earnings limit, despite the department having access to near real-time data.

As a result, hundreds of thousands of people have unknowingly accumulated huge debts (sometimes more than £20,000), which the DWP is trying to recoup years later and is threatening carers with criminal prosecution if they don’t pay.

Ministers last month pledged nearly £75 million to fix the scandal and ordered a reassessment of nearly 200,000 historic cases. The DWP says around 26,000 carers will have their debts canceled or reduced, but experts believe the figure should be much higher.

Yeandle said the failures were putting vulnerable families under “unbearable pressure”.

He said: “To rebuild trust, the government and the DWP must issue an unreserved apology for this. It has left a terrible and lasting legacy for some carers and in these cases I think the government should consider paying compensation. Some debts have accumulated over long periods of time and carers have not been made aware of this by the DWP until years later.”

Yeandle, former director of the University of Sheffield Care Centre, said the government’s initial response to the Sayce review “looked promising” but he had lost confidence in the department’s commitment following the Couling controversy and its refusal to fully accept several key recommendations.

One proposal, only partially accepted by the DWP, was to publish clearer guidance on what expenses carers are allowed under the rules.

Katy Styles, of the We Care Campaign, said she believed Couling should resign and said it was difficult to trust Schofield, the DWP’s permanent secretary.

“Systemic failures are not abstract policy problems,” he said. “These translate into stress and financial insecurity. It’s a constant struggle for a department that has tremendous power over people’s lives to have faith.”

He said the DWP’s response to failures was crucial because for carers it was “really about being listened to and protected from further failure”.

He added: “Ministers need to ask whether a culture that has repeatedly minimized these concerns can change itself, or whether clear political leadership is required to impose the cultural and leadership change that the victims of this scandal deserve.”

Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden told the BBC’s Laura Kuennsberg program earlier this month that Couling’s comments were “not the position” of the DWP and said the issue of carer’s allowance was “a long-standing issue that was ignored by the previous government”.

A DWP spokesman said: “We have inherited a system that has failed carers, but we are taking decisive action to put things right and rebuild trust, and we accept the vast majority of Sayce’s review recommendations.

“We are already making changes, hiring extra staff to stop carers building up huge debts, updating internal guidance and ensuring letters clearly explain what changes carers need to report.

“And we will continue to make things right by reassessing affected cases and potentially reducing, canceling or repaying debts for tens of thousands of carers, while also working to modernize benefits so this doesn’t happen again.”