Unpaid carers shocked at having to repay thousands

[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnGetty ImagesBy Jemma Crew & Tim JohnsBBC NewsUnpaid carers who have been told to repay thousands of pounds of benefits after accidentally earning too much money years ago say it is wrong and unfair. Two former Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) ministers have told the BBC they are calling for the government to pause its demands for repayments of large sums of money.Gina Price had been looking after her dad for a decade before she realised she could apply for Carer’s Allowance in 2013. By this time she was working part-time at a petrol station as well as caring for her father, who had a series of conditions including a hip replacement that did not go to plan. She says she received Carer’s Allowance for about five years. She says she would sometimes agree to work an extra shift, but would do fewer other weeks. This way, she believed she would remain under the earnings threshold to qualify for the benefit.But in 2019, she received a letter saying she owed the DWP about £7,600, to cover overpayments for periods over three-and-a-half years to February 2018. DWP take woman’s inheritance over supermarket job The 59-year-old says she was “astounded” by the amount, and has been repaying £100 a month since. “It’s always grieved me,” she says. “I think it’s so unfair.” A DWP spokesperson said it is “committed to fairness in the welfare system” and that safeguards are in place “for managing repayments while protecting the public purse.”Ms Price is one of dozens of listeners who shared their stories with the BBC after the issue was covered on Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine show.Full-time carers can claim £81.90 a week, but they become ineligible for the whole amount if they earn just a pound over £151 a week, after tax and expenses. Carers told the BBC they were unaware they had exceeded the threshold until being informed years later, when the sums had run into the thousands.Gina PriceMs Price, from Carmarthenshire in south-west Wales, says: “I’m sorry to my heart I ever [claimed it], because it was an absolute nightmare amount to owe.”It added to her grief after her father died in 2019, she says, describing the debt as a “big, big weight on me on top of everything else”.”I was so browbeaten after everything with my father, he was dying by the time they’d approached me, and I just wanted to pay them, keep them off my back, and I needed to get on with my life,” she said.The DWP has faced criticism for failing to prevent overpayments, despite having the ability to do so, and allowing some recipients to end up in legal trouble.Benefit staff get automatic alerts from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) if a Carer’s Allowance claimant is earning too much.Claimants have a responsibility to ensure they are entitled to benefits they claim, the DWP says.Five years ago, the House of Commons Work and Pensions Committee accused the DWP of “bullying and harassing” those who had been overpaid.In a report it published in 2019, it also said problems with the DWP’s systems, and staff shortages, had led to “substantial backlogs” in checking flagged cases of potential overpayments.Carers bullied by government, MPs say As of February 2023, the DWP said it was seeking to recover 145,567 overpayments of Carer’s Allowance, which is given to people who provide at least 35 hours a week of care. That includes almost 12,000 cases concerning overpayments of between £5,001 and £20,000.’I was so shocked, I could have fallen through the floor’Andrea Hawley, from Battle in East Sussex, believes she will be repaying money for the next decade. The 50-year-old left her job in 2009 to care for her son, who has a genetic disorder, autism, a learning delay, and skeletal and heart problems. She started working part-time in her family business for about two hours a day, while claiming Carer’s Allowance.In 2019, Mrs Hawley says she received a letter telling her she owed the DWP just over £14,000 – later reduced to about £12,700 – in overpayments made between May 2013 and December 2017.”I can remember being so shocked I could have fallen through the floor,” she told BBC News.The DWP arranged to deduct £80 a month from her Carer’s Allowance to cover the overpayments. Mrs Hawley says she stopped receiving the benefit in 2022, and now pays £50 monthly from her wages. She says she did not realise she was above the earnings threshold, adding: “It’s just so wrong. Why don’t they let you know sooner? “Why do they let it go for years and years and years, and then say ‘you owe us all this money’?”.’Penalised for being honest’Cristina Odone, head of the family policy unit at the Centre for Social Justice, told the BBC the “so-called debts should be forgiven”.She added: “One of the causes for this scandalous miscarriage of justice is that the DWP’s own IT system was able to flag when the earnings threshold was breached, but they failed to alert the carers themselves that they were now in a perilous situation and could end up owing thousands of pounds.”Lesley Whitehouse, 53, from Coventry, spent years as the primary carer for her sister who has severe mental and physical disabilities.A social worker told her she was eli …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]