What’s the difference between an organised crime gang and an unpaid carer making an honest mistake?

None, according to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) they both need to be punished. Let me explain, in the news this week was a story about an organised crime gang from Bulgaria scamming the DWP by making false benefit claims to the tune of over 50 million pounds. What was also in the news this week was several stories of unpaid carers being fined and prosecuted for honest mistakes relating to their carer’s allowance payment (a whopping £81.90 a week). You are only entitled to claim the Carer’s Allowance if you don’t earn more than £151 a week (after deductions). Because a lot of unpaid carers are forced into poverty for providing care the Social Care system should, they often try to get small part jobs to make ends meet. The trouble with that is, if they exceed the earning threshold (even by £1) they are forced to pay back *the entirety* of their carer’s allowance for every week they are in breach of the earning limit.

So far so complicated.

We’re talking about people who save the government literally billions of pounds by doing what our taxes should, and who have to sacrifice their lives to do so- hardly hardened criminals intentionally trying to steal from the system. Does the DWP have a sophisticated system to detect early mistakes and breaches of their strict rules? Do they hell. This results in a lot of unpaid carers who unwittingly broke the rules to suddenly be faced with demands for thousands of pounds after the DWP woke up, years too late in some cases, to their honest mistakes. What the actual F as the young people say (I think?).

I understand there has to be rules but this is stupid, unjustifiable, criminally unfair and sounds like borderline entrapment to me. It is the DWP’s responsibility to have systems in place to detect these mistakes and quickly correct them for honest mistakes and to catch criminals much quicker than the 5 years it took them to catch the Bulgarian gang- I doubt they’ll be getting that taxpayer money back.

This also speaks to the utter contempt for unpaid carers in the UK, somehow expected to provide specialised care with no help or training, give up their lives, and survive on £81 a week with the added bonus of the very British stigma surrounding claiming benefits.

I would suggest some of our money be invested in tech to detect fraud and errors, but that would require competent administration of it, not something we’ve come to expect from this government.

They seem to have a very peculiar way of trying to get re-elected in the upcoming election…

You can read more about this scandal here: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/apr/09/calls-to-end-persecution-of-carers-over-uk-benefits-rule-breaches#:~:text=Nearly%2030%2C000%20people%20were%20told,carers%20rather%20than%20intentional%20dishonesty.