Dr Sam Rushworth

May I begin by expressing my appreciation of the family carers in the Bishop Auckland constituency? According to helpful researchers in the Commons Library, one in seven of my constituents provides at least an hour of unpaid care each week, and over half of them are eligible for carer’s allowance. Nationwide, as we have heard, our army of family carers is the equivalent of a second NHS. I agree with the criticism made by the shadow Secretary of State that we must not risk opening the door to fraud, and it is precisely because I believe in the welfare state that I think it must always be watertight and widely perceived as fair. However, I am concerned that in a huge number of cases—I am inclined to believe that it is the majority of cases—overpaid carer’s allowance is the result of inadvertent error. As others have said, this is a complicated benefit and when so many stressed family carers find themselves having to pay back large sums of money, there must be some onus on the Government to take responsibility. This issue is so widespread that I think every MP in this place will have been contacted by constituents facing hardship. These are decent, honest people who work hard, who serve their families and communities and who ask for little, and they feel as though they are being treated like criminals while the Government have become the nation’s biggest debt collector. If I may, I will briefly raise a specific issue that two of my constituents have raised with me. They are being required to pay back thousands of pounds because of inadvertently earning just above the earnings threshold. However, as they have pointed out to me, carer’s allowance is counted as income in universal credit claims, so had they not claimed it, they would have received more in universal credit. I gently urge the Minister to consider this point as part of the review, as people are not only being pushed into hardship due to being made to pay back overpayments, but may actually be worse off on aggregate than if they had never claimed.