Written Question

Carer's Allowance: Overpayments

Wednesday 24th April 2024

Asked by: Alison McGovern (Labour - Wirral South)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to paragraph 3.18 of the National Audit Office report entitled Investigation into overpayments of Carer’s Allowance, published on 26 April 2019, what changes were made to the business rules of the Verify Earnings and Pensions Service that revised downwards the number of alerts that were forecast to be generated from 380,000 to 75,000.

Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)

A review of rules has provided a streamlined approach to the identification of VEP rules, enabling alignment with the latest HMRC data that feeds into DWP Real Time Earnings (RTE) system.

Examples of improvements include benefit specific rules, such as details of fluctuations in income, one off payments and irregular payments revision.

The Department is constantly reviewing available resources against priorities.

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Deposited Papers
Department for Work and Pensions

Jun. 26 2023

Source Page: I. Benefit and pension rates 2023/2024 [Revised]. 14p. II. Letter dated 19/0/2023 from Guy Opperman MP to the Deposited Papers Clerk regarding the revised table of benefit and pension rates for deposit in the House Libraries. 1p. [Previous table DEP2022-0900]
Document: 23.06.19_table_of_rates.pdf (PDF)

Found: thereof, above or between the amount of capital disregarded and any capital upper limit applicable CARER'S

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Departmental Publication (Statistics)
Department for Work and Pensions

Mar. 21 2024

Source Page: Family Resources Survey Transformation: integrating administrative data into the FRS
Document: Family Resources Survey Transformation: integrating administrative data into the FRS (PDF)

Found: 2 800 2 1,420 3 -44 Carer's Allowance 1 800 2 950 2 -16 Employment and Support Allowanc 2 1,100 2 1,660

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Written Question

Carer's Allowance: Overpayments

Monday 27th February 2023

Asked by: Margaret Greenwood (Labour - Wirral West)

Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many debts of overpayments of Carer's Allowance his Department was seeking to recover in value brackets (a) £0.01 - £500, (b) £500.01 - £1,000, (c) £1,000.01 - £5,000, (d) £5,000.01 - £20,000 and (e) over £20,000 as of 1 February 2023.

Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)

Table 1 details the number of live Carer’s Allowance overpayments the department is seeking to recover, by the value brackets requested, as of 1^st February 2023.

Overpayment Value	Volume of Overpayments
£0.01 - £500	55,010
£500.01 - £1,000	50,753
£1,000.01 - £5,000	27,761
£5,000.01 - £20,000	11,773
Over £20,000	270
Total	145,567

Table 1 - Note: Data is for England, Wales and Scotland only, and represents overpayments held with balances greater than £0.00.

Table 2 details the number of overpayments of Carer’s Allowance for the last available year (2022/23) where the reason for overpayment was recorded as earnings over the Carer’s Allowance limit. The actual amount of earnings received is not captured. The bandwidths used therefore relate to the amount overpaid.

Overpayment Value	Number of overpayments (2022/23)
£0.01 - £500	7,121
£500.01 - £1,000	7,271
£1,000.01 - £5,000	11,476
£5,000.01 - £20,000	835
Over £20,000	36
Total	26,739

Table 2 - Note: Data includes devolved overpayments from Scotland but excludes Northern Ireland.

Table 3 details the number of overpayments of Carer’s Allowance there have been in relation to the earnings conditions for the past 5 years.

Going further back, the data excludes overpayments fully repaid – details of which are archived after 14 months and fully deleted after 7 years, which does not allow for a true figure to be calculated. Data includes devolved overpayments from Scotland.

Financial Years	Volume of Overpayments
2018/19	25,761
2019/20	39,502
2020/21	19,742
2021/22	35,965
2022/23	26,739
Total	186,268

Table 3

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