The National Audit Office report into Carers Allowance overpayments was published today, there's an article in the Guardian about it here:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/201 ... nefit-debt.
The links to the report are here, report :
https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploa ... owance.pdf and the summary :
https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/uploa ... ummary.pdf
The report makes it clear that
DWP didn't put enough staff on checking Carers Allowance claimants' earnings with HMRC. Between 2014 and 2018 they only checked about 10% of the data matches they received. Consequently the claimants who were not picked up on the data-matching who were allowed to rack up large overpayments.
From the report: "The Department’s internal audit team found that around two-thirds of carers with
debts over £2,500 for overpayments relating to a failure to correctly report earnings would
have had their overpayments stopped earlier if the Department had put in place sufficient
staff to effectively investigate all matches identified by its data matching systems."
The report also shows that
DWP either prosecuted or gave administrative penalties (fines of an extra 50% of the overpayment, which they offer to claimants accused of fraud instead of prosecuting them) to over 1700 carers in 2018. I don't see how
DWP can continue to use these additional punishments when their own internal audit has admitted that
DWP themselves have allowed these overpayments to run on. It even shows that an internal whistleblower told them about this as early as Feb 2016. I think Carers UK should have a look at this and see if anything can be done legally.
Frank Field in the Guardian article:
Frank Field MP, chair of the work and pensions committee, said the report “devastatingly laid bare the incompetence at
DWP, and its stark human cost”.
“There was already plenty wrong with the way we recognise carers’ invaluable contribution. Rather than making things worse, why doesn’t the department just spare us all: end this massive scandal, focus on the real fraudsters and write off the overpayments it has allowed to build up unchecked.”