Work and pensions committee chair tells ministers to fix carer’s allowance issues

Timms, the chair of the Commons work and pensions committee and the Labour MP for East Ham, told BBC Radio 4’s Money Box programme that the DWP seemed to “completely ignore” the notifications it received when an unpaid carer earned more than the £151-a-week limit.

The Guardian revealed this week that 156,000 unpaid carers are now repaying severe penalties – pushing many into debt or financial distress – for often unwittingly overstepping the small earnings limit while caring for a loved one.

Timms’s intervention comes amid growing political pressure on the government over a scandal that has generated widespread outrage at the draconian treatment of unpaid carers, a group routinely praised by ministers as heroes whose sacrifices help prop up the NHS and social care system.

The senior Labour MP said the DWP’s failure to keep on top of the thousands of automatic notifications of potential carer’s allowance earnings it gets each month was a major cause of overpayments.

Official figures published in April 2023 show that, of 107,475 potential breaches flagged to DWP using an HMRC data feed over the previous year, just 50,046 were investigated.

One of Timms’s fellow work and pensions committee members, the Labour MP Debbie Abrahams, called on the DWP to contact carer’s allowance claimants as soon as an alert was issued, to give them the chance to check their claim before any overpayments spiralled out of control.