Carer’s Allowance

Bobby Dean Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Colleagues have outlined the scale of the crisis, so I shall focus on a story of one of my constituents in Carshalton and Wallington. She was told that she had to repay more than £2,300 in carer’s allowance over- payments. This constituent already makes huge sacrifices to keep her family afloat, while caring for her disabled son. She gave up her full-time job to take on caring responsibilities and has limited her part-time hours to ensure that she remains qualified for carer’s allowance. It made me so angry to hear how meticulously she tried to manage her pay cheques each month, only to have it thrown in her face. She turned down pay rises, turned down overtime and turned down Christmas bonuses to ensure that she stayed under the limit. Her employers agreed to keep her on an advance rota to help her plan her earnings. Despite her diligence, she received no notice, no warnings and no forgiveness when one day the payments stopped and the bill came in for over two grand.

Here is the bit that really gets me. The repayment demand that she received is for the entire entitlement for each occasion when she earned too much. That means that the smallest indiscretions come with the heaviest of consequences. In one month, it was because she earned £28 too much. In another, it was £20. It gets worse: one November, she was £8 over the limit—not even an hour’s work in London. Finally, and most depressingly, she once dared to earn £2 too much. She owes the whole of the allowance back for each of those periods, and then a £50 fine to boot from the Department for Work and Pensions. This is nothing short of a national scandal, and the DWP should be ashamed of itself.

Today, the Liberal Democrats are calling on the Government to right this wrong, to stop pursuing hard-working carers for these innocent overpayments, and then to fix the system that let this scandal emerge in the first place. We need to taper the allowance, raise the earning limits and treat carers with the compassion they deserve.

I am conscious of time, so finally, I welcome and am encouraged by the Minister’s comments about the review. However, for it to be successful, carers need to play a big part and have full input. We also need to make sure that carers now in debt distress get some immediate reassurances and support and do not have to wait until the end of the review.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call Dan Aldridge to make his maiden speech.