Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill

Lord Palmer of Childs Hill Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 21st October 2025 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill]

103: After Clause 96, insert the following new Clause—
“Recovery of overpayments of Carer’s AllowanceThe Secretary of State may not exercise any of the powers of recovery under this Act in relation to a person who has received an overpayment of Carer’s Allowance until such time as—(a) the Secretary of State has commissioned an independent review of the overpayment of Carer’s Allowance,(b) the review has concluded its inquiry and submitted a report containing recommendations to the Secretary of State, (c) the Secretary of State has laid the report of the independent review before Parliament, and(d) the Secretary of State has implemented the recommendations of the independent review.”Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment would delay any payments being taken from people who the Government may think owe repayments of Carer’s Allowance until the independent review into Carer’s Allowance overpayments has been published and fully implemented.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, throughout the passage of the Bill, we on these Benches have repeatedly raised concerns about the punitive measures applied to carers who receive carer’s allowance and subsequently earn small amounts through additional work, often losing their carer’s allowance entirely. Amendment 103 would prohibit the Secretary of State using recovery methods in cases of overpayment of carer’s allowance until an inquiry has concluded and recommendations from that inquiry have been implemented on carer’s allowance overpayment.

We have had discussions with the Minister’s department on this, and we are hopeful that the Government will commit from the Dispatch Box to a date for publication. In those conversations we were promised a departmental briefing to me and, if necessary, to an MP of my choice. I will give advance notice of what we would expect to learn in that briefing: when do the Government expect to publish their response to the report? It has been nearly three months since they received the report. We acknowledge that there has been a change of Secretary of State, but are the Government still treating this with the high level of priority that they have given it so far? At our meeting, can the Government also set out a timetable for the publication of the report and actions they will take to deal with the issues set out in that report?

What are the Minister’s reflections, if she has reflections, on the report and its findings? Will the Government meet with carers—and in particular Carers UK, with which I have been in constant touch—who have been affected? Finally—and this will probably be the nail in the coffin—are the Government considering writing off any overpayments to carers?

From discussions that we have had outside this Chamber, I hope we can have a meeting with the department to deal with these matters and get some progress on them. Maybe it would not solve them completely, but it would mean that we feel we do not need to test the feelings of the House.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, I am afraid that we must oppose Amendments 103 and 113 set out by the noble Lord, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill, for the same reasons that we gave in Committee.

The independent review to which I believe the noble Lord refers has a clear and limited purpose. As set out in the Government’s own guidance, it is designed to establish three things: first, how overpayments of carer’s allowance linked to earnings have occurred; secondly, what can best be done to support those who have accrued them; and, thirdly, how to reduce the risk of such problems arising in the future.

Nowhere in that remit does it question whether the overpayments were made. That point is already settled. The individuals in question have received government funds—taxpayer funds—to which they were not entitled. To put this in context, since 2019 over £357 million has been overpaid to carers for various reasons, such as where claimants breached the earnings limit, where claimants ceased to provide care, and where the claimant was also in receipt of an overlapping benefit. Often, I have to say, there have been innocent reasons.

The review will rightly examine how the system can be improved and how claimants can be better supported, but it will not, and cannot, rewrite the fact that money was misallocated and must therefore be returned. We think it would make no sense to halt all recovery activity pending the outcome of a review that does not address the underlying question of entitlement. The amendment would effectively suspend the recovery of public money that we already know has been wrongly paid out. We believe this cannot be justified, whether fiscally or morally.

I appreciate that the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, who is in her place, set out to us outside the Chamber her concerns about a cliff edge. I welcome that input—her doing that and saying that—and the Government may want to comment on that. But it is also worth remembering that, even according to charities in support of those who have caring responsibilities, overpayments have been made to people who have not correctly reported that their caring responsibilities have ceased, that the person they are caring for has died, or that they are in receipt of an overlapping benefit. The person in question has a duty to report these changes, and it is clearly wrong that the person has not fulfilled their obligation to the taxpayer to report when these events happen.

Moreover, this amendment goes even further by requiring the Government not only to await the completion of the review and the laying of its report before Parliament but to implement its recommendations in full—I must emphasise that—before recovery can resume. We believe that this is quite extraordinary. We have no idea what those recommendations will be, and it would be deeply irresponsible to commit the Government in advance to implementing them wholesale without the ability to assess, modify or reject them as appropriate.

Public funds must be safeguarded and the Government must retain the flexibility to act responsibly in response to the review’s findings. This amendment would tie their hands and delay indefinitely the recovery of money that should never have been paid in the first place. In his summing up, the noble Lord might suggest how long the wait would be; the noble Baroness might also hazard a guess. Will it be many months, if not possibly a year or two? We really do not know, but I am sure it will be many months. It will become increasingly difficult to recover the money when so much time has gone by. Individuals may have experienced substantial changes in their lives or gone abroad. At worst, the individuals may, very sadly, have died.

For whatever reason, and bearing in mind people’s circumstances or vulnerabilities, we believe in principle that overpayments—a reminder that this is taxpayers’ money—are just that. They have been made to individuals in error—please note that—and should be repaid as soon as possible. I have an iota of sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Palmer, on the principle behind the amendment—namely, ensuring fairness and learning lessons from what has gone wrong—but its practical effect would be short-sighted, costly and contrary to the basic duty of government to protect the public purse. For those reasons, we cannot and will not support it.

--- Later in debate ---

Finally, it is worth noting that some measures in the Bill are crucial for preventing the kinds of issues seen with carer’s allowance, but in other benefits. As the noble Lord knows, we are not proposing to use the eligibility verification measure with carer’s allowance, but it will improve the DWP’s access to critical data, helping to verify entitlements, identify errors and overpayments, and prevent a build-up of debt in three other benefits: universal credit, ESA and pension credit. Delaying the Bill would delay the opportunity to stop others building up overpayments and debts. As I have outlined many times, there are robust safeguards to ensure the proportionate and effective use of these powers, including independent oversight, new rights of review and appeal, and clear limits on scope. I hope, having given the assurances the noble Lord was seeking, that he will now feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for all that she has said. We are looking to have a departmental meeting to deal with the problems out of the public eye. I take some issue with what the noble Viscount said about carers. Many of them are receiving things they should not receive. I accept that. The trouble is, once you have received it and bought your loaf of bread or whatever it is, there is no money left. A lot of those people are in straitened circumstances and we have to understand that not everybody is good at managing their finances when they have very little. I ask for us to look at that in a caring way, punishing those who have blatantly taken money they should not take, but also by building up the comments I have made. If the Minister agrees to such a meeting with me and one of my Members of Parliament so that we are all singing from the same page, in those circumstances I am prepared to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 103 withdrawn.