Increase Carers Allowance (petition)

[joyhibbs]

Please sign my petition to the Prime Minister
Carers on Carers Allowance receive £46 per week. Unemployed people om Jobseekers Allowance receive £56 per week.
My aim is that carers receive at least the same as unemployed people i.e. £56 per week.

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/carersinpoverty/

Thank you very much
Joy

[Guest]

Carers allowance will soon be £48.60 but why ask for such a small rise in CA? CA should be tripled and the overlapping rule scrapped for CA as should the amount you can earn before CA is stopped. Going to sign the petition for what good it will do.

[rosemary]

I have signed it but agree with Wildthing...much bigger increase needed and definitely overlapping rule to be scrapped.

Rosemary

[charles47]

Carers UK have, I believe, campaigned for Carers Allowance to be at the same rate as the standard UK pension. Not that the government went with that idea either.

And I have to say, I prefer the minimum wage argument. This is, after all, the only benefit you have to earn with at least 35 hours a week of work. I just wish there was the possibility of a test case on this one. I'm fairly sure the government would lose - after all, they lost over women claiming ICA when caring for their husbands back in the '80s.

[Myrtle]

I have also signed, but we should be going for minimum wage. After all, 35 hours is a full working week for some people, who then go home and do whatever they like
At the ridiculously low amount CA is set at, it is really quite insulting

[charles47]

I'm with you, Myrtle.

[joyhibbs]

Thanks very much for signing. I see the £10 increase as a first step and believe we would have almost universal support from people in the country for this. It is very easy for people to see immediately that there is a discrepancy between CA and JSA and similar benefits. Small steps may be our best way. Please sign if you can. Joy

[charles47]

I'm a big believer in small steps, Joy - it's the small steps that nobody notices but before you know it you've done 1,000 miles.

[Pysie]

So who is going to ask the government why they have never implemented the reccommendations of their own Royal Commission, 1999, which said carers should be paid the same level as the basic pension?

[Myrtle]

Pysie, you put it up and we'll all sign