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 unprocessed change in circumstance notifications which led to the over-payment of carer's allowance.

There is no estimate. When we receive a notification of change, consideration is given as to whether the change will affect the benefit. Where it does, action is taken to prevent an overpayment, or to stop an overpayment. Once the customer has notified us of a change in their circumstances, any delay in actioning that notification would be official error and would not be recoverable from the customer.