Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what estimate she has made of the number of carers; what estimate she has made of the cost to the public purse of increasing the level of carer’s allowance to the existing level of contributions-based jobseeker’s allowance for people aged 25 and over; and what estimate she has made of the cost to the public purse of increasing the carer premium by the current difference between carer’s allowance and contributions-based jobseeker’s allowance for people aged 25 and over.

The level of Carer’s Allowance (CA) is protected by uprating it annually in line with the Consumer Price Index (CPI). Since 2010 the rate of CA has increased from £53.90 to £64.60 a week, meaning an additional £550 a year for carers. In 2022/23 the Government is forecast to spend £3.7 billion on CA, a 36% real terms increase in expenditure on 2016/17.

Additionally, carers have access to the full range of social security benefits according to their circumstances. There are carer “premiums” in income-related benefits, such as Income Support, Housing Benefit and Universal Credit. These amounts recognise the additional contribution and responsibilities associated with caring and mean that lower-income carers can receive more than others who receive these benefits. For example, in 2017, 6 out of ten households on Universal Credit with a Carer Entitlement recorded received a Monthly Award Amount of over £400: this is in addition to any CA they may receive.

According to the Family Resources Survey (2016/17), there were an estimated 5.4 million informal carers in the United Kingdom in 2016/17. Only some of these receive Carer’s Allowance.

DWP can provide a broad illustrative gross cost of paying an extra £8.50 a week (the current difference between the rate of CA and the Jobseeker’s Allowance over 25 rate) to 810,000 CA recipients (rounded down CA in-payment cases in Great Britain, August 2017). This would have cost in the region of £360m in 2018/19. (Around 9% of this expenditure covers carers living in Scotland where CA will shortly be devolved to the Scottish Government.) Actual costs will also be affected by possible behavioural impacts, such as whether the higher rates of benefit will encourage more people to claim CA and, therefore, may be higher than the indicative forecast costs. The information requested on premiums is not available.