Oral Answers to Questions

Anna Dixon Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Torsten Bell]

I am always keen to work together with the Father of the House. He mentions the triple lock, but we are doing far more things to tackle pensioner poverty. There were 900,000 pensioners eligible for pension credit under the Conservatives who were not claiming, and that is why we have brought forward the biggest take-up campaign ever seen. The marketing campaign this year will run from September to the end of the financial year, we are carrying out research on what works to encourage take-up of pension credit and we are stepping up data sharing across Departments, including between His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions.

[Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)]

7. What steps he is taking to implement the recommendations of the review of carer’s allowance overpayments, published on 25 November 2025.

[The Minister for Social Security and Disability (Sir Stephen Timms)]

Liz Sayce did an outstanding forensic job in getting to the bottom of the carer’s allowance overpayment problems. We have accepted or partially accepted 38 of her 40 recommendations. The Department will reassess overpayments incurred between 2015 and last summer where fluctuating earnings were an issue, and we will set out detailed plans in the new year.

[Anna Dixon]

I thank the Minister for his response. As he well knows, over the last decade, around 185,000 unpaid family carers have been pursued by the Department for Work and Pensions to return overpayments in their carer’s allowance. Through no fault of their own, many working carers have faced bills that have often run into thousands of pounds. It is incredibly positive that, after years of inaction from the Tories, this Government have acted. Does the Minister share my hope that trust might now be rebuilt between the state and the near 6 million unpaid family carers in this country?

[Sir Stephen Timms]

My hon. Friend is a great campaigner for carers on this issue and others. She is absolutely right: this is a very serious problem that was ignored for 10 years, despite there being quite a lot of publicity about it. I hope, as she says, that trust will now be rebuilt as we fix these problems in the coming months.