Unpaid Carers: Inequalities

Ellie Chowns Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. I warmly thank the hon. Member for Shipley (Anna Dixon) for securing this vital debate to mark Carers Rights Day, and indeed everybody else who has spoken from the heart and made such important points. We all recognise that the care system is in crisis, and that unpaid carers play an essential role in supporting people who need care.

I welcome the fact that the Casey Commission, which has been mentioned already, is working—although, I suggest, perhaps not as fast as it needs to be. I am deeply concerned by the Government’s proposal that it should not report for another few years, because resolving the care crisis is a matter of urgency and political will. I am honoured to be the Green party representative on the cross-party talks; I would like those talks to be convened more frequently and to operate much faster, but in the meantime I look forward to welcoming the Casey Commission to my constituency next month as part of its evidence-gathering process.

I am currently engaged in a wide public consultation exercise, running a survey and holding listening exercises in my constituency. My team are visiting various care settings to gather people’s input. I will share the story of one constituent who contacted me a few days ago. She moved to North Herefordshire in 2022 from more than 100 miles away to care for her mother, who was elderly and declining. She left her entire life, moved in with her mum and got a part-time job at a much lower salary than she was used to in order to support her mother, who earlier this year was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia.

My constituent was put in the position of going out to earn £12.21 per hour while paying £20 an hour for somebody to come and look after her mother. She put in an application in early April for carer’s allowance to support the costs of a paid carer, who enables her to keep doing her part-time job, but it was refused. She contacted the DWP in July: the Department said that a mistake might have been made and she was due a mandatory reconsideration. She chased the matter up again but, seven months after her initial request, she has still not had a response. She says that carer’s allowance is too little and takes too long, and that the criteria are far too limited—I could not agree more.

I leave the Minister with my constituent’s words:

“I don’t want to financially benefit from caring for my mum. I just don’t want to be pushed into poverty while I keep her out of hospital and out of a care home.”

She cares for her mum 24/7. When worked out by the number of hours, carer’s allowance is about 55p per hour, because it covers nighttime care as well as daytime care. Surely the least that unpaid carers deserve from us is a benefit system—a carer’s allowance system—that supports, recognises and works with them, enabling them to provide the vital care that keeps those people who need it out of hospital and care homes.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Bennett]

I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend’s excellent point. It is regrettable that there seems to be only one person that the Government like to call on to do very important work across a number of different areas.

[Dr Chowns]

The hon. Lady and the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) make very good points. I gently point out to the Government that it is not Baroness Casey’s job to convene cross-party talks. Political leadership is needed, and it should come from the Health Secretary himself. We do not need to wait for Baroness Casey to bring all the parties together—the Government need to do that.

[Alison Bennett]

I agree with the hon. Lady’s comments.

Unpaid carers, who are the focus of Carers Rights Day, do remarkable, difficult and emotionally demanding work every single day. They do it out of love, without recognition and, too often, without the support or rights that they deserve or should have access to.

As the spokesperson on care and carers for my party, this is something I say a lot, but it bears repeating: unpaid carers are the backbone of Britain’s care system. There are 5.7 million carers across the UK, and together they provide care worth an estimated £162 billion every year—almost the size of the entire NHS budget. For that to be the case, however, they make huge sacrifices. Every single day, 600 people leave their job to care for someone they love. If carers are expected to shoulder that vast responsibility, they must have rights. Those rights must be well known and easy to access, and must make a meaningful difference to carers’ lives. Today is about making sure people know and use their rights.

I am proud that my colleague and hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife changed the law with her Carer’s Leave Act 2023, which secured the right to unpaid time off work for carers. That legislation was an enormous step forward for the almost 2 million employees who balance work and caring responsibilities. I am also proud that Liberal Democrat campaigning helped to secure an increase in the carer’s allowance earnings limit in last year’s Budget, easing pressure on people who want to remain in work while caring. I recently tabled the Unpaid Carers (Respite and Support) Bill, which would guarantee regular respite breaks for unpaid carers—something that is not readily accessible across the country.

There is much more to do, however, and unpaid carers face inequalities on all fronts. On gender, women become carers earlier and more frequently than men, are more likely to provide care and more likely to work in part-time and lower-paid roles. On employment, carers face barriers to remaining in paid work, with large numbers reducing their hours or leaving their jobs. On health and wellbeing, caring drives significant and preventable health inequalities, with high rates of long-term conditions, worsening physical and mental health, difficulty accessing support, and greater impacts for women and those providing the most hours.

On poverty, there are currently 1.2 million unpaid carers in poverty and 400,000 in deep poverty, who struggle financially due to low carer’s allowance, a reduced ability to work and a complex benefits system. Young carers face substantial disadvantages in terms of education and future opportunities. Those spending more than 35 hours a week caring are far less likely to gain a degree or enter employment. That is why the Liberal Democrats want unpaid carers to have real financial support, including an increase of £20 a week in the carer’s allowance to bring it to £103.30. In next week’s Budget, should the Chancellor be minded to increase the minimum wage, I sincerely hope that carer’s allowance will be pegged to that increase.

We also want a review of the requirement of 35 hours’ care per week, which too often forces carers to make impossible choices. Critically, we want a taper on the earnings limit so that, if a carer’s earnings go above the limit even by a few pence, they do not immediately lose all their carer’s allowance. That is plain common sense. It is precisely because there is no such taper that the carer’s allowance overpayment scandal has been allowed to happen, with horrendous consequences for thousands of carers.

Carers deserve better. They deserve respect, they deserve support and they deserve rights that they can rely on and easily exercise. Carers Rights Day reminds us that rights are powerful only if people know they have them and feel able to use them. Too many carers do not know what they are entitled to; too many assume that support is not for them and too many are simply too overwhelmed to navigate unnecessarily complicated systems. That is why fantastic organisations such as Carers UK and Carers Trust are vital. They look out and speak up for these extraordinary carers to whom we owe so much.

On this Carers Rights Day, I close by echoing the words of the Princess of Wales, who urged us this week to restore

“the dignity to the quiet, often invisible work of caring…as we look to build a happier, healthier society.”