As the Guardian has noted:
New figures show more than 150,000 unpaid carers are now facing huge fines for minor rule breaches, as MPs, charities and campaigners demanded an immediate amnesty.
They added:
The Guardian can reveal 156,000 unpaid carers are repaying severe penalties – in some cases tens of thousands of pounds – for often unwittingly overstepping the £151-a-week earnings limit while caring for a loved one.
11,600 carers hit by the penalties are paying back sums of more than £5,000. About one in five unpaid carers in work breached the strict weekly earnings limit last year, an illustration, campaigners say, of a broken system.
The last point is the key one. Of course, benefits have to be limited as to who can claim them. But benefits also have to recognise the realities of life - where rigid control of everything that happens within chaotic real-world situations - as the lives of carers usually are - cannot be controlled. That is most especially true when care-giving is the absolute and necessary priority of those providing it.
A system that does not provide for that is callous.
A penalty system that imposes costs way in excess of the loss suffered by the government, as this one does, is beyond callous.
Creating the capacity to pursue claims that impose poverty when the object of this benefit was to relieve it is indicative of a mindset that has lost touch with reality.
Of course, if there is fraud, chase it, but I very much doubt that many of these claims involve fraud. They refer to simple human error. In that case, there should be forgiveness in most cases, coupled (perhaps) with repayment, at most, of a part of the sum overpaid, representing a fair tax rate (ten per cent?) on the excess earnings not declared.
But so long as this persecution continues, we are living in a country governed by a political party that shows it just does not care.
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A point I rarely hear mentioned is the sheer exhaustion experienced by carers and the impact on their lives. Trying to keep on top of normal, day to day ‘admin’ is difficult when you are tired beyond description.
When you finally get a moment to yourself, it’s probably late at night and not the best time to try to concentrate. I know in my experience it can also lead to procrastination, in the hope that ‘tomorrow’ wouldn’t be as demanding and I’d be better able to deal with whatever matter required my attention. Getting to the bottom of my ‘to do’ list is an aspiration that feels impossible. Which is a long-winded way of saying I can totally understand how and why people may have made mistakes.
You are right to term the action “persecution”.
I have been a carer
It pushed me to my limits
I work in Benefits
So, lets start
The only place that is competent to adjudicate on a benefits issue is the First Tier Tribunal as the criminal courts cant even start to understand it.
But because of lack of legal aid, resources, understanding most of the alleged frauds wont have been there.
There is an article in The Guardian here
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/25/sunak-under-pressure-to-grant-amnesty-to-unpaid-carers-fined-for-benefit-breaches
including
A tribunal judge told the Guardian he was “really troubled” by the DWP’s “harsh” approach and the lack of evidence behind many of the penalties.
The judge, who was not authorised to speak publicly, said he rules in favour of unpaid carers in three-quarters of the carer’s allowance cases before his court, often because the DWP is unable to prove that the person breached its earnings limits.
Now I understand that the Carers Allowance earnings rules are not straightforward AND those who have provided expert support to claimants in DWP ‘Overpayment’ cases say that it isnt usually that difficult to find an error in them. So potentially lots of people have been prosecuted for overpayments that may never have ocurred.
The next thing is that the DWP has a system called VEP. Basically Income that is reported via PAYE is then available for DWP staff to inspect. Not only that but if someone is getting benefits it will create an alert if it changes. So if you then process those alerts then you can prevent or minimise overpayments.
But the DWP hasnt been looking at these alerts, as a result we now have all these issues with Carers.
Its starting to look like a Post Office MK2
Any questions do ask!
Not of you, John, Thanks for input.
My question would be to the Dept. and and those set the rules and prosecute on such slender evidence.
It was asked of Senator Joseph McCarthy by Joseph N Welch, ‘Have you no decency?’
John,
Would I be right in thinking that any PAYE info would come via HMRC?
Then the accuracy of the DWP data would be dependant on the employers payroll & HMRC systems?
I’m pretty sure Fujitsu are heavily involved with HMRC…. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that name before somewhere…..
HMRC records for PAYE-able income are pretty good. People lose Universal Credit every month, based on those records. HMRC’s only ‘input’ is to automatically forward the details to DWP. Their system for doing that seems to work well. The failure is in the DWP not bothering to action them for carers. Could that be because the longer they ignore it, the more they can squeeze out of the carers.
The suspicion must be that they have gone for the low hanging fruit.
I do wonder if these prosecutions had to be done by the CPS then they would have failed the ‘Public Interest’ test
Agreed
Like many of the abusive claims for minor erros by HMRC
Richard,
You write: “we are living in a country governed by a political party that shows it just does not care.”
Richard,
And there’s the rub. A mean, soulless and utterly uninterested party is prepared to countenance misery and unhappiness for millions whilst a small select group just keep on coining it.
I’m no Tory but I cannot help thinking that the current “Conservative” party would appear to the likes of Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas-Home as some sort of bastard child, the absolute opposite of the party that they represented.
Drive them fast to their [political] tomb.
Are these so called ‘benefit cheats’ a basis of complaints about benefit fraud we see in the ‘red tops’ and from other right wing news outlets? An untruth that would support their propaganda about the welfare system. The number of people affected and the exaggerated level of outstanding repayments suggests they would be interested.
On the other hand, this outrage provides them with a stick to beat the poorly performing civil service and the state in general. A situation brought about by their callously indifferent ideology which allows the government to create such a cruel system in the first place and not operate it fairly with sufficient resources. A situation that will also allow the politicians to posture as they ‘correct’ the anomaly that they ‘knew nothing’ about, though in reality they could not be bothered to enquire.