Thousands penalised after failure to overhaul carer's allowance

Hundreds of thousands of unpaid carers were hit with ruinous penalties for minor breaches of carer's allowance rules in the five years after senior welfare officials promised to fix the scandal-hit benefit, an official audit has revealed.

- Patrick Butler Josh Halliday

Campaigners said the National Audit Office (NAO) report highlighted the scale of the misery and hardship inflicted on carers over the period as well as the extent of the failure by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to tackle overpayments.

More than 262,000 repayable overpayments totalling in excess of £325m were clawed back from carers who had - mostly unwittingly - fallen foul of carer's allowance rules, while 600 carers were prosecuted and received criminal records after DWP civil servants referred their cases to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Charities and MPs said the watchdog's report showed that the DWP's failure to properly staff its carer's allowance department and address flaws in the benefit's design had left thousands of carers in financial difficulties and emotional distress.

A Guardian investigation this year revealed how Conservative ministers allowed overpayments to grow almost unchecked for years, despite senior officials promising MPs in 2019 that new data-matching technology would eradicate the problem.