Nusrat Ghani
Main Page: Nusrat Ghani (Conservative - Sussex Weald)Department Debates - View all Nusrat Ghani's debates with the Department for Work and Pensions
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Alison McGovern
Our country is in a very serious financial situation indeed. As I said at the beginning of my speech, anyone who thinks that the issue of care ought not to be right at the top of the political agenda is labouring under a serious misapprehension.
This is an important subject, which is why I am proud of the first steps that this Government have already taken to improve support for carers and to address the overpayment of carer’s allowance, which has caused so much distress for thousands of people. This shows our commitment to recognising and valuing the vital role that carers play in our communities. Of course there is much more to do, so it is my hope that, as we deliver the fundamental change that we need, we can work together with carer organisations and with carers themselves with a renewed sense of purpose to ensure that carers get all the support they need to carry out the incredible work of caring and to live full and fulfilled lives.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
Order. This is a heavily subscribed debate and I am determined to get everybody in, so this is fair warning. After the next speaker, Back Benchers will be limited to three minutes and maiden speeches will be limited to five minutes. These will be hard limits to ensure everybody gets in after our next speaker, Wendy Chamberlain, who has unlimited time.
Wendy Chamberlain (North East Fife) (LD)
I declare an interest as I am in the process of joining the board of Fife Carers in an unpaid capacity; it is a privilege to join the organisation. I have worked with unpaid carers throughout the past few years, as constituency MP for North East Fife and through the passage of my private Member’s Bill that became the Carer’s Leave Act 2023. If hon. Members want to learn more widely about carers, they may wish to read my Adjournment debate on the subject, which took place in the first few weeks of this Parliament, where I talked about the need for a strategy on carers to ensure that carers get the cross-cutting governmental and departmental support they need.
I will not touch on the overpayments scandal specifically, but I welcome the announcement of the review after months of campaigning by my dear friend the Leader of the Liberal Democrat party, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), as well as by the Liberal Democrats, carer charities and journalists. However, I want to raise some points about the carer’s allowance more generally.
I recently asked the Minister responsible for carer’s allowance, the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), a written question about a review of how carer’s allowance is working. The response said:
“This government will keep eligibility criteria and processes of Carer’s Allowance under review, to see if it is meeting its objectives.”
That response poses more questions than it provides answers. What are the Government’s objectives for carer’s allowance? Are they ever reviewed? How do they know if they are meeting them? What metrics are being used? What would happen if it was found that the objectives were not being met?
I assume that the objective of carer’s allowance is to keep unpaid carers out of poverty, given the additional barriers they face to working and the additional costs they face through their caring. I also assume that we want to help unpaid carers to stay linked to the workplace, if possible, through part-time work or training. On any assessment, carer’s allowance is failing these objectives. It is a failure when a third of households in receipt of carer’s allowance are classed as food insecure, compared with 10% of households as a whole; when Carers UK research from 2019 found that 600 people per day who were caring were giving up work; and when the rate of poverty among unpaid carers is 50% higher than among non-carers.
One immediate remedy that could be considered, as is set out in our motion, is an increase in carer’s allowance. It may not seem much in the big scheme of things, but during the pandemic we saw the impact of the £20 uplift to universal credit, which delivered an immediate and marked fall in food bank use.
We must do all we can to support people into work and to stay in work, so that they are not relying on carer’s allowance to get by. That point refers to the earnings allowance, which stops carers from working more than 13 hours a week on the minimum wage before losing carer’s allowance. As has already been discussed, there is no taper rate, so as soon as carers earn a penny more, the allowance goes.
Bizarrely, yearly increases to the allowance are not pegged to changes to the national minimum wage. Historically, people could work for 16 hours before they lost carer’s allowance; some of the scandal we have seen could be because people have continued to make those assumptions. We need to take the complexity out of the system. It is completely reasonable for people to assume that if they are earning national minimum wage and receiving carer’s allowance in one financial year, they can continue to do so in the following financial year, as long as they do not increase their hours, but that is not how the system works. The national minimum wage went up by 9.8% this year, but the earnings allowance did not go up at all. That sounds to me like a system set up to make people fail.
Should we not be enabling people to take on more hours and to progress in their jobs if they can? We know that often people—especially those who are below or near the poverty line, as too many unpaid carers are—are scared to risk losing their benefits in case that does not work out. One of the unseen outcomes of the scandal is that people are simply not looking for work or to get into employment because they are scared about the consequences.
Many young carers have high levels of absence from school and there are barriers to them accessing education. Potentially, if we do not help them to claim carer’s allowance when they are entitled to do so, they will never go into work and be able to make a contribution. Fife Young Carers, in my constituency, supports people up to the age of 25. We want to encourage young carers to complete their education so they have the best possible options later.
To return to my cross-cutting strategy, the Department for Work and Pensions may think that it is for the Department for Education to support young people. However, as the hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) said, under the under-21 rule, doing a vocational qualification could preclude somebody from receiving carer’s allowance, as T-levels are one of the qualifications that falls into that trap. She is right that we need to think about how we are potentially inhibiting those young people in employment and training from moving forward. We need to ensure that we improve young people’s outcomes.
The Minister will know that employment among unpaid carers is about more than just benefits. We welcome her reference to the Carer’s Leave Act 2023 in her opening remarks and the fact that the Government are looking for that leave to be paid, which has long been a party policy of the Liberal Democrats. However, I do have to express my disappointment that there was no sign of paid leave in the Employment Rights Bill, because there was a real opportunity there to move the matter forward. I would appreciate it if, in her closing remarks, the Minister provided an update on the likely timescales in relation to the Carer’s Leave Act. I am concerned that, since the implementation of the Act, we do not actually know what the take-up of carer’s leave is. I am hearing worrying anecdotes that, six months after the legislation was fully implemented, some companies are still not aware of, or properly recording, carer’s leave. Part of that is because the communication from the then Government was not good enough. Unless somebody was starting a small business, or actively looking for these details, they would not find anything on carer’s leave.
I would like to raise one final point with the Minister. Again, the hon. Member for Salford highlighted this. I am often contacted by constituents who are upset to find that, having retired, they have lost their carer’s allowance—or, in Scotland, the carer support payment—because they are claiming their state pension. We know that female pensioners are more likely to be in poverty because of the working life that they have had—or not had—as a result of raising their families, and that unpaid carers are more likely to be female and older. I would like the Minister to pick up on that point, because too many pensioners are in poverty this winter as well as carrying caring responsibilities.
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.
Johanna Baxter (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)
I welcome the debate, brought by the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), and pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Clwyd North (Gill German) and for Weston-super-Mare (Dan Aldridge) on their maiden speeches. I welcome the Minister’s announcement of the independent review into how overpayments of carer’s allowance have occurred, what can be done to support those who have accrued them, and how to reduce the risk of overpayments occurring in the future.
Around 175,000 carers in receipt of carer’s allowance are combining paid work with care, and in 2023-24, there were 34,500 overpayments as a result of earnings and carer’s allowance. That means that around one in five carers who are doing paid work and claiming carer’s allowance have had an overpayment in the last year. That the previous Government allowed this situation to occur is, frankly, utterly shameful. It has pushed many unpaid carers, including many in my constituency of Paisley and Renfrewshire South, to breaking point for the sole crime of caring for somebody they love and saving the taxpayer thousands of pounds in doing so. Without their contribution, our country would grind to a halt. That this has happened to them through no fault of their own is not okay. We must provide carers with the support that they need, at the time they need it.
The Carers UK “State of Caring” report estimates that 1.2 million unpaid carers are living in poverty, and 400,000 are living in deep poverty. It also found that 75% of unpaid carers receiving carer’s allowance are struggling with cost of living pressures, while almost half are cutting back on essentials that they need to survive. That is the legacy of 14 years of Tory Government. While it is right that the review will look at getting a grip of the carer’s allowance overpayment issue, there is an urgent need for the Government to consider the broader question of how to provide wider support for unpaid or family carers. That includes support for carers on low incomes through universal credit, and through carer’s allowance.
While carer’s allowance is a devolved matter in Scotland, I urge the Government to discuss with the Scottish Government the position with respect to people in Scotland who are, or have been, receiving carer support payment while the DWP has been delivering it there on behalf of Scottish Ministers. We need a long-term vision for social care that considers how we best support unpaid carers. I know that our Government are committed to building consensus for the longer-term reform needed to create a sustainable care service.
Madam Deputy Speaker
No, I am standing now. Thank you. I call Steve Darling to make his maiden speech.
Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a great honour to stand here as the MP for Torbay. It is right and proper that I acknowledge the hard work of my predecessor, Kevin Foster. I also reflect on his predecessor, Adrian Sanders, with whom I worked for 18 years to support constituents in Torbay. I learned from Adrian how to put the community at the heart of all one does as a constituency MP. I look forward to building on that over this parliamentary term.
I want to thank Pam Bagnall, Hans Windheuser and Frankie Ranwell-Jones for their support at the general election. I also acknowledge the support of family members throughout my 30 years as a councillor. My mother Penny, who is here, my wife Mandy and my two sons George and William have been very, very supportive.
Other people who have been extremely supportive are the staff at Westminster, who have been an absolute delight to me and Jennie, who is planning to become the “leader of the o-paw-sition”. She is doing very well and living the true life of a parliamentarian: turning up in the Chamber and having a good sleep. She is also being a parliamentarian by making sure that she receives lots of love from wherever she can get it throughout the estate. The customer service that we have received stands in stark contrast to that in “Fawlty Towers”, for which Torquay is famous, but Members can rest assured that if they do choose to visit the English riviera, the service they receive will be of high quality.
What makes Torbay special? We have six blue flag beaches. We are somewhat challenged by the sewage in our seas, and I look forward to challenging and holding the Government to account on that particular issue. We are also a UNESCO-registered geopark, with Kents cavern at its heart. That is perhaps the oldest dwelling along the south coast of England, yet we have a wicked housing crisis in Torbay, which is, again, something that I look forward to challenging over this parliamentary term.
Torbay has been one of the wealthiest places over 100 years or so, but now we are somewhat more challenged. Oldway mansion is perhaps a prime example. It was modelled on Versailles and used as a hospital during the first world war, but it has seen better days, as has our hospital in Torquay, only 6% of which is considered standard A. We have had almost 700 sewage leaks in our hospital, affecting clinical services at times. I am shocked and horrified that the previous Government allowed our hospital to get into that state, and I cannot believe that the new Health Secretary will allow such a hospital to remain on the Government’s books unsorted.
The managing director of the steam railway in Paignton, John Jones, does something amazing every year for carers. Our “Train of Lights” service starts up in late November, and the first night is free for almost 2,000 carers. Families with disabled youngsters, foster families and those with care experience are all welcome. I thank John for doing that. That reflects what we are discussing today. I hope the Government will forgive the liabilities that some carers have. We need to enhance the payments and ensure that there is a guarantee of respite care.
I conclude by saying to the people of Torbay that this is the honour of my life, and I look forward to championing Torbay throughout the Parliament ahead of us.
Josh Babarinde (Eastbourne) (LD)
Sophie, Clare, Oliver and Wendy are some of the most resilient people I know. They are all Eastbournians, they would all do anything for their families, and they are all carers. They are among the 9,415 carers in Eastbourne, and I promised them that I would use opportunities such as this debate to recognise their resilience and give them and their families a voice. Today, I strive to do exactly that. I strive to do it particularly with respect to the need for wider support to carers, which the motion mentions.
Sophie Ticehurst and her family care for Sophie’s 24-year-old brother Jack, who has autism and is non-verbal. They rely on the Linden Court day centre—which supports people with learning disabilities—for Jack’s care, but also for their respite; but the centre faces closure after years of Conservative underfunding, and it would be devastating for them if that went ahead. As would the proposed closure of Milton Grange day centre, particularly for people with dementia—again, down to the Conservative county council. That place serves as essential respite to Clare, whose 82-year-old mum benefits from its amazing care. Where is the care for the carers? We urgently need the Government to intervene to properly fund our local authorities, so that these essential care resources can be protected.
I also pay tribute to Oliver Davis, a young carer in my constituency. He is a 14-year-old Eastbournian, and since the age of eight has cared for his mum, who lives with significant cardiac issues and the long-term effects of a stroke. His mum said that
“he never complains about being a young carer.”
Oliver does us all proud. In fact, he also won a BBC Make a Difference award for being a young carer across Surrey and Sussex, and he also does the local charity Care for the Carers proud, which he works with to advocate for young carers like him.
Lastly, I want to mention Wendy Turner, a different type of family carer—a kinship carer, whom you know, Madam Deputy Speaker. She stepped up to take her two grandchildren into her care when she was 53, but she is short-changed by our system, which unjustly offers her a lower kinship care allowance than the local fostering allowance. That needs to change. Where is the care for the carers?
Our carers do so much to lift people up, but time after time, our system wears them down. Enough is enough, so I say to the Government: dignify their experiences with action; honour their stories with reform; and never take our carers for granted.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I do not want to be seen being too kind to a fellow Sussex MP, but kinship carers are indeed visiting here today.
Matthew Patrick (Wirral West) (Lab)
There are many honours in this role, and one is to be able to take part in important debates such as this and hear the expertise and passion of hon. Members across the House. I will start by paying tribute to the many carers who do incredible work in my constituency. At times of immense need, they step in, day after day, supporting family members and making such an important contribution to those they love and to our community. Our country simply would not function without them and their contribution, and I wish to share my immense gratitude to those carers from my area and beyond. Their selflessness and dedication makes this scandal all the more unfair, with carers pushed to breaking point and stress piled on stress. Sadly, like too many issues, this crisis was totally ignored and left to grow by the previous Government.
At Wirral carers’ week earlier this year, I met carers who have been impacted by this issue, and I know the anxiety it has brought them, as they have had to juggle their caring responsibilities with the uncertainty it has brought. Stability is long overdue. Carers need to know that lessons will be learned and that the mistakes of the past will not be repeated.
I welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement that she will launch the independent review into carer’s allowance overpayments, led by the disability rights expert Liz Sayce. We all wish her well with that important review. I also welcome the announcement by the Minister for Employment of the launch of a pilot to support carers further. With these steps, I truly hope that carers feel valued and listened to, that the issues they feel are important are brought to light and that there is support for them. I welcome today’s announcement, and I hope that with it, our brilliant carers know that this Government are on their side.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
We got everybody in who wanted to participate, so well done. We now come to the Front Benchers. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)
I start by congratulating those hon. Members who made their maiden speeches this afternoon. The hon. Member for Clwyd North (Gill German) gave a brilliant description of her time teaching and the inspiration she provided to her pupils. As someone who grew up in Gloucestershire, I say to the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Dan Aldridge) that his town was our destination of choice for seaside days out. My hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Steve Darling) represents another seaside town, and he and the honourable Jennie are both dear to the Liberal Democrat group.
I pay tribute to the work of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain) in bringing forward her private Member’s Bill in the last Parliament on unpaid carer’s leave. We are truly proud of her achievement in bringing that into law as the Carer’s Leave Act 2023. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) for all his work on care and carers, and for bringing this debate to the House today.
The carer’s allowance scandal has been overlooked for years. It is astonishing that it has taken a Liberal Democrat Opposition day for this critical topic to finally receive the attention it deserves. The fact that we have had to bring this debate today—late in 2024, after a change of Government and five years after MPs looked into the carer’s allowance scandal and concluded that there was no evidence of mass fraud—is shameful and a stain on the legacy of the previous Conservative Government.
The Conservatives failed to take the action needed. The Conservatives failed to tackle the cultural problems at the DWP. The Conservatives failed to care about carers. Today, Members from across the House have given voice to unpaid family carers, whom we should be thanking, rather than punishing. We have heard about how the DWP’s actions left people feeling insulted, bullied, harassed and crushed. That is not right. We should be lifting up these people. We should be thanking them, not hounding them, for the love and care they give to their loved ones.
The population of my Mid Sussex constituency is older than the average. Across the country, the population is ageing. We cannot shy away from the fact that we will as a society increasingly rely on carers. Just because care often happens in homes—in private and behind closed doors—that does not mean that it is not important or that we can ignore it. I welcome the Government’s announcement on commissioning an open and transparent report to review the carer’s allowance overpayments, but questions remain. Will the Minister stop the shameful attempt to recoup overpayments? Will there be an amnesty on pursuing past overpayments? Will they consider tapering carer’s allowance? Will they consult on whether 35 hours of care a week is the right threshold for claiming carer’s allowance? How will they set about changing the culture of the DWP, so that people never feel like criminals simply for caring for their loved ones while trying to work to pay the bills?
It is disappointing that the Government are seeking to amend our motion to delete what carers are crying out for. After years of Conservative neglect, we cannot afford yet more dither and delay. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) said, unpaid carers save the taxpayer an astonishing £162 billion a year. The Government’s financial worries would stretch far beyond the current £22 billion black hole were it not for those unsung heroes. That is not just a statistic; it represents a profound debt of gratitude that we owe to those who provide care. The social, emotional and financial value that unpaid carers bring to our communities cannot be overstated. This afternoon, Members from all parts of the House have made that point loud and clear.
Carers are not just caregivers; they are a lifeline giving support that our healthcare system would struggle to replace. There is, however, a danger in viewing care as merely transactional. Care is far more than just fulfilling a basic physical need; it is about enabling individuals to achieve their potential and live fulfilling lives—lives that they deserve to enjoy. Family carers support loved ones in ways that help them thrive, not just survive.
I close by thanking the Government for their response today and for engaging so constructively in this debate. I thank the charities that advocate for carers for the vital work they do. Most importantly, I thank the 5.7 million unpaid carers across the country for all that they do, day in, day out, with love and compassion. They are the very best of us. We see what carers do, we hear what carers are saying, and I and my Liberal Democrat colleagues will continue to speak up for them in this place.