Carers welcome overpayments review but call for total overhaul of benefits system

Unpaid carers have welcomed plans to launch a review of "outdated" benefit rules that have left tens of thousands of people who look after loved ones with huge debts and threatened with prosecution.

- Patrick Butler, Josh Halliday

However, they said a much wider review was needed to reform the "unfit for purpose" system of carer benefits, and some urged ministers to write off £250m of existing overpayments owed by claimants who have been unwittingly caught by carer's allowance rules.

The welfare secretary, Liz Kendall, announced plans on Tuesday to overhaul aspects of the carer's allowance benefit in an attempt to put an end to growing public outrage over injustices that have been compared to the Post Office scandal.

A series of Guardian articles in recent months have revealed how tens of thousands of unpaid carers who did paid work part-time were being harshly punished by benefits officials for often minor and inadvertent breaches of strict carer's allowance earnings rules.

Although the terms of reference for the independent review of carer's allowance overpayments have not yet been published, Kendall has promised it will be open and transparent and to "learn all the lessons" about carer's allowance failings.

The Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, himself a carer for his disabled teenage son, John, welcomed the decision to launch the review and paid tribute to "campaigns by carers' organisations, the Guardian newspaper, and the Liberal Democrats".