Carer’s Allowance

Marion Fellows Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2024 Westminster Hall

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Cummins. I congratulate the hon. Member for Neath (Christina Rees) on the way she introduced this important petitions debate, in which I am grateful to be able to speak as the SNP spokesperson for disabilities and the SNP carers champion.

I have had the pleasure of engaging with disabled people, their carers and carers organisations over the last number of years, and it really has been a privilege. My engagement with them stunned me at first, as I concentrated on the disabilities aspect of my role. I then went to a drop-in in Parliament and spent an hour and a half listening to carers, and became more involved on that side of things. Carers play such an invaluable role, and the impact they have on the lives of those they care for is almost unquantifiable. They show the best of humanity and are truly altruistic people who devote much or all of their time to others, but they are not properly recompensed by this Government.

Before I get into the cold numbers and economic arguments for increasing carer’s allowance, on a human level I want to pay tribute to carers right across the UK and thank them for all they do. Carers ought to finally get the recognition they deserve, as for too long they have been unsupported, exploited and taken for granted. The work of unpaid carers is what holds society together. According to Carers UK, there are an estimated 5.7 million people in the UK who provide unpaid care, accounting for 9% of the population. I want to say a special thanks to North Lanarkshire Carers Together, Lanarkshire Carers and NL Young Carers for all the help and support they give unpaid carers in Motherwell and Wishaw, and to all the other local organisations across the UK.

Each and every one of us can, and potentially will, become a carer or be cared for by someone at some point in our lives. None of us can predict the future. Circumstances change: before we know it, we may be caring for or receiving care from a loved one. Each year, around 4.3 million people become unpaid carers. That is 12,000 people a day. Unpaid carers’ support is worth a staggering £162 billion a year in the UK. Let me repeat that: £162 billion a year. According to the Carers Trust, the value of unpaid care is £12.8 billion per year in Scotland alone. The figures are huge, and the importance of unpaid carers in our economy is enormous, yet carers feel unsupported. Three in five are worried about living costs, 600 have to give up work every single day, and a quarter of carers have either “bad” or “very bad” mental health.

The enormous contribution of unpaid carers to the economy makes it all the more shocking that carers are under-supported in the UK. That was reflected in evidence given to the Work and Pensions Committee in March in a session on carer’s allowance. Representatives from Carers UK, Carers Scotland and the Centre for Social Justice all agreed that carer’s allowance is inadequate and each of the organisations took issue with the earnings limit. It was noted unanimously by those organisations that the UK lags behind comparable jurisdictions, most of which link the earnings limit to hours worked and not how much a person earns, thereby not confining people to low-wage work.

Ahead of today’s debate, a number of organisations were in touch with me to highlight the dire situation in which carers find themselves in much of the United Kingdom. The MND Association said that 90% of those who care for people with MND feel that the welfare benefits they receive do not meet their needs as carers. Meanwhile, in 2022, the MS Society, which is part of the Carer Poverty Coalition—this week is MS Awareness Week—conducted a report on the friends and family of those with MS and found that only 17% of respondents were in receipt of carer’s allowance.

The restrictive access to carer’s allowance, including the 21-hour study rule south of the border, is arbitrary and means that those who need support are missing out. The UK Government should follow Scotland’s lead by removing the 21-hour study rule and enacting measures like the Scottish young carer grant.

It is nonsensical that those who care for more than one person often miss out on carer’s allowance because the eligibility rules do not allow for caring hours to be combined cumulatively. Many carers who spend the equivalent of a full-time job caring cannot access carer’s allowance, which shows how broken the system is. The MS Society has outlined the horrendously low rate of carer’s allowance and the financial impact that that has on carers. Spread over 35 hours per week, the value of carer’s allowance equates to just £2.34 per hour, a whole £9 below the national minimum wage. That is horrendous. The current rate of carer’s allowance is totally exploitative.

The UK Government take advantage of the love that carers have for those they care for; they exploit their altruism and offer totally inadequate compensation in return. There is absolutely no recognition of how integral carers are to the functioning of society and the UK economy. It is essential that the UK Government increase the level of carer’s allowance to at least the minimum wage so that it better reflects the financial impact of caring responsibilities. I therefore support this important petition.

Coupled with the Carer’s Leave Act 2023, which I supported and recently came into force, a move to increase carer’s allowance to the minimum wage would demonstrate that the invaluable work of carers is finally receiving some of the recognition it deserves from the UK Government, but more should be done. The Government must increase the earnings limit to ensure that carers can work and earn if they are able to and wish to. The rhetoric from this Government always focuses on getting people back into work and reducing economic inactivity, but they do not follow up their hollow talk by putting support mechanisms in place. Whether it is for disabled people or, as in this case, carers, there is workforce potential that is not being tapped into because of the lack of adequate support.

With the current levels of support, unpaid carers are particularly vulnerable to falling into poverty, not just because of the devastatingly inadequate rate of carer’s allowance but because of carers’ limited ability to earn an income and the additional costs they face, which they cannot cut back on without affecting the safety of the person they care for. Those include the costs of taking the person they care for to hospital, keeping their home at a safe minimum temperature, charging essential medical equipment for their loved one and doing extra laundry.

A perfect storm of lack of recognition, lack of proper financial support and risk of poverty while caring for a loved one leads to high levels of stress and can have a significant impact on the mental and physical health of the carer, seriously impinging on their own quality of life. In turn, that increases the carer’s own need for treatment, support and services in order to help them cope.

The SNP Scottish Government took action to mitigate the substandard level of carer’s allowance by introducing the carer’s allowance supplement in 2018. It is paid half-yearly and is £288.60 in 2024. Some might think that is a trifling amount, but for some carers it makes a huge difference. There is also a young carers package offering discounts and opportunities for all young carers aged 11 to 18. The Scottish Government fund Carers Trust Scotland to run the Scottish young carers festival to allow young carers to take a break.

Since launching the carer’s allowance supplement, the Scottish Government have made 920,000 payments, totalling around £255 million. In Scotland we would like to do more, but we are limited by the strict confines of budgetary constraints following cuts to the block grant. In an independent Scotland, more could be done to improve the lives of carers.

Despite that, the Scottish Government continue to recognise the huge contributions that carers make to society. In November 2023, we launched the carer support payment, the main Scottish social security benefit, which will replace carer’s allowance in Scotland. Scottish social security treats all claimants with dignity, fairness and respect. The carer support payment has been developed to deliver an improved service, designed with carer and support organisations to meet the needs of those who use it, and to provide links to wider services to help carers access the support to which they are entitled.

Working within a fixed “pocket money” budget, the Scottish Government have continuously tried to mitigate cruel Westminster policies in order to treat carers with the respect they deserve. The Scottish Government are totally committed to carers. They are investing £88.4 million a year in local carer support through local authority funding under the Carers (Scotland) Act 2016, and have provided £8 million a year for voluntary sector short breaks since 2022-23, enabling more people, including young carers, to take a break from caring.

Carer Positive, which works with employers in Scotland, was founded 10 years ago, and I am one of its members. I believe that MPs and MSPs should do all we can to promote that excellent scheme, which helps employers to do their bit for the carers they employ and gives good advice. It is time that the UK Government followed suit with some of these initiatives and showed carers the recognition they deserve, as well as giving them the financial support they need.

We have heard this afternoon of carers being harassed and penalised for overpayments made by DWP, adding insult to injury. Will the Minister look at that? Will she also commit to responding positively to the Work and Pensions Committee reports in a timely manner, and to stopping the cliff-edge situation that carers face with benefits?