Ministers are facing calls to abandon the “cruel and nonsensical” fines levied on tens of thousands of unpaid carers for unwittingly breaching earnings rules by just a few pounds a week. The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), a centre-right thinktank, said the government should end the “persecution” of carers and accept that it was to blame for allowing overpayments to run up to huge sums, in some cases more than £20,000.That's like saying we won't prosecute burglars if the homeowner has failed to apply all the locks on their back door.
The DWP should be able to identify when a carer’s earnings have exceeded the £151-a-week limit and notify them, but in many cases the government fails to do so, meaning people unwittingly rack up huge debts.We all appreciate that rules are sometimes byzantine and complicated to follow (eh, Ange?), but let's not forget just who's money this is in the first place. It's the taxpayer's.
The former justice secretary Robert Buckland told the Guardian that the DWP “shouldn’t be treating these carers as criminals”, adding: “It’s utterly repugnant and wrong.” He said: “They need to accept they’ve made a mistake and accept the money is gone. Take it on the chin. The carers are going to be under immense pressure already and it’s not their fault. At the very least they [the DWP] could claw the money back over a long period of time so the carers aren’t put into immediate crisis. But it’s the DWP’s mistake so they should cover the lost money.”
And how would they do that, since any money they have is also our's?
