Martin Lewis points out 'concerning' rule change to DWP benefit claimed by 1.4 million people

Martin Lewis has raised his "concern" over the Carer's Allowance consultation as the Labour Party plans a change to the Department for Work and Pensions ( DWP ) benefit. The BBC Sounds and ITV regular spoke out on Twitter, now X, over the shake up to the benefit, which is claimed by 1.4 million people.

Mr Lewis wrote: "Govt's just put out its #CarersAllowance consultation remit. Its worthy aim's to examine how to stop the overpayment crisis that's left 100,000+ unwittingly owing State money (due to crap systems).

"Yet my concern is it mightn't address the big issue ie the hideous cliff-edge! Carers allowance providers those on low income who care £82 a week income, but you can only get it if you earn under £151/wk. Go 1p over that limit and you lose it all. That is perverse. Other benefits don't work that way - they're tapered.

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"And this is the clear cause of the problem (I've written to the Chancellor about it before) Overpayments happen because many carers are stressed overworked vulnerable people, if they get a slight pay uplift (eg min wage rise) and don't notice, the benefits office keeps paying them.

"So they could've earned 1p a week over for 10 weeks, then be asked to pay an unaffordable £820 back. I have put a question in to the consultation body to double-check that they are able to examine this, and hope they are, if not the whole thing would feel farcical. I will keep you up to date."

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. 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.

Stephen Timms, the minister for social security and disability, told the Guardian: “This review, the first of its kind, will look at how we can put things right. It will help us understand why overpayments happened in the first place and how we can stop them happening in the future.”

He added that the concerns of unpaid carers would be “heard, listened to and addressed” by the review, which will be chaired by the disability policy expert Liz Sayce and is expected to report in early summer 2025. Timms said: “We want a new settlement, in which our carers are genuinely supported to carry out their sacrificial work. Where admiring stories are told of their service, rather than of unwitting debt accrual and of repayments the carers have had to make. The review will be key to this new settlement.”