Maisie: Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast
Andy: Hello and welcome back to our miniseries for the Paul Foot Awards.
We're speaking every day this week to a brilliant journalist or
team of journalists shortlisted for this year's Paul Foot Award.
So without any further ado, let's get on with today's mini episode and find
out who is up for the award today.
Patrick Butler: I'm Patrick Butler.
I'm the social policy editor at the Guardian.
Josh Halliday: I'm Josh Halladay, the North of England Editor, at the
Andy: Guardian.
And what's the story that has brought you to the Pul for awards?
Patrick Butler: We call its Carers Allowance Scandal.
This is a story about injustices in the benefit system.
it's about how those injustices have inflicted debt and misery and
untold stress On some of the most vulnerable and poorest people in
our society who has devoted their lives to looking after loved ones.
Carer's Allowance is probably the least well known, and it's definitely the, the
least valuable benefit you can claim.
last year joined the bulk of the, the time that we were covering the
scandal, it was 83 pounds a week.
Andy: how do you qualify for that, benefit
Patrick Butler: you qualify for carer's allowance.
If you provide full-time care for a loved one, it could be your partner, your
mother, your child, who has a disability, or, is, frail or chronically ill.
And you have to provide care for 35 hours.
a Week.
Okay.
Andy: about two pounds an hour, roughly.
these payments are administered by the Department of Work and Pensions.
Yeah.
Patrick Butler: Yeah.
Andy: So we are dealing with people who've been receiving carer's
allowance and then they're told you've been overpaid under this system.
is that right?
Josh Halliday: That's right.
Yeah.
So in, in the majority of cases that we've covered, a person has started
claiming car's allowance to look after their loved one, it means that,
when you're caring for your loved one full-time, you can't do full-time work.
So this is in effect, a top up for a salary.
It's not a replacement for a salary, by any
Andy: means.
No.
Josh Halliday: it's so pitifully small for the care that they provide
and how much they save the country.
people are allowed to earn a certain amount of money, per
week while claiming this benefit.
Andy: Okay.
Josh Halliday: if they step over that limit by a penny, they have to pay back
the full week of carer's allowance.
So if you earn one p more.
than the care, than the threshold you have to pay back 83 pounds
Andy: it's called the Cliff
Josh Halliday: Edge Effect.
Patrick Butler: So the DWP has this technology whereby it's being sent
these alerts from HMRC about earnings,
and it has the ability to check those alerts,
but to check them, it requires that a human being.
Actually looks at it phones up the carer sorts out,
whether or It's an issue.
what we were able to reveal is for the last five six years,
they've only checked half
of all those alerts, carers are then thrust into this kind
of Russian roulette situation.
whereby By total chance, your overpayment may be spotted in the first week and
you have to pay back 83 pounds, or it could go on for five years, and
you were asked to pay back 16,000 pounds, and it is entirely random
and of course it could be anywhere on that spectrum.
Andy: it's really extraordinary.
Can, could, do you know what the threshold is of the maximum amount
you're allowed to earn in a week?
It's, low.
Patrick Butler: last year when we were doing our investigations, the
limit was 151 pounds a week, which is
about
13 hours at the national.
Minimum wage.
Andy: So if I was a carer, I would be able to have a minimum wage job for,
part-time, maybe one a day and a half, and, still qualify for carer's allowance.
Absolutely.
But if I earned 152 pounds, suddenly I don't qualify.
But the Department of Worker Pensions doesn't let me know that I have,
over earned and I'll be having to pay back that week's allowance.
They let me continue earning that amount of money, 152 pounds,
and every week that happens.
I will lose the allowance, but I won't know about it yet.
Patrick Butler: this is where it gets very interesting about risk and blame,
in social security law, and this, the DWP will always fall back on this.
They will say, it is up to the carer to tell us that their
circumstances have changed.
Andy: One of the first cases that you reported on was that of Vivian Groom.
Can you tell me a bit more about her?
Josh Halliday: I. Vivian Groom was.
A carer for her, elderly mother, and claimed carer's allowance
while working a, part-time job, a few hours a week at a co-op.
as is the nature of part-time jobs.
And often they are, by the way, in supermarkets because
that's what part-time work is
Andy: like.
Josh Halliday: the nature of these jobs is that sometimes you'll get, unexpected
holiday pay, a small bonus or covid pay.
It's these things that have tipped people over the edge, she got this
letter through the door to say, you are being criminally prosecuted.
You owe us 16,000 pounds.
Patrick told me about this story.
I'd never heard of Kerry's allowance before.
He said, you need to go to Chester Crown Court I remember.
Reading Patrick's email on my phone as I was stood like a few feet
away from Vivian Groom before she was about to called into court.
I struggled to understand it 'cause it just seemed so outrageous
it couldn't possibly be right.
I went over to speak to Vivian and her, husband, and they were utterly petrified.
Like almost shaking.
Andy: Yeah.
Josh Halliday: They'd never been inside a courtroom before.
They'd never had a parking ticket before.
They were in the same courtroom that Myra Hinley, was sent down in.
The initial judge that they saw was fairly compassionate and said the DWP
need to go away and, justify to us why you are taking this woman's, inheritance
16,000 pound life changing sum money when you can't prove that she knew she
was earning more than the threshold.
The
DWP never went away and proved that there was another hearing a few
months later and within minutes.
I. a different judge just took away the, inheritance.
It was, devastating to watch.
Andy: She had been working and earning over the threshold, but she wasn't
told about this until years later.
Patrick Butler: what's really fascinating about the Vivian Groom case is she's only
earning 'cause of the nature of the job.
she's only earning just a few pounds over the.
and.
at one point she says, I've been offered more hours at the Co-op.
I want to come off carer's allowance.
And the DWP says, oh, we'll get back to you on that.
And they never do.
So she blithely continues and even then in 2019, she stops.
She stops caring for her mom.
'cause I think her sister comes in and takes over.
She stops caring for her mom and she cancels car's allowance.
And so she stops receiving it.
we reckon that over that period of five years, the DWP would've received
up to 60 alerts from HMRC saying that she had overstepped the earnings limit.
So there were multiple opportunities for DWP to say, hang on,
Andy: Yeah.
Patrick Butler: can we sort this out please?
But, they didn't,
Andy: and she was trying to alert the DWP to a change in, she didn't, the most thing
Patrick Butler: was doing the right
Josh Halliday: thing.
are the most selfless people who've sacrificed their own lives, their own
careers, everything to look after the people that they love and the word,
it, one of the carers put it to me that they're powered by unconditional love.
They are, but it really feels like the government takes advantage of them and
then comes down like a ton of bricks when they've found to be fractionally.
Above this, draconian threshold.
Andy: Has Vivian's inheritance been returned to her?
Josh Halliday: No.
Patrick Butler: What's extraordinary is that had DWP contacted her in 2014,
after a few months and said, Mrs.
Groom, I'm sorry.
You know, you are being overpaid here.
We need to sort this out, she would've paid back possibly a few hundred
quid in overpayments that was allowed to accumulate to 16,000 pounds.
And three years after she stopped receiving the benefit, she then
gets a demand for 16,000 pounds.
So at that point she says, oh God, oh, it's my fault.
Oh God, sorry, I'll pay it back.
So she's already agreed, I'll pay it back 30 quid a month or whatever.
And then after that, department of Prosecutions at the DWP behest comes back
and says, I'm not sure how they know this.
But they realize that she's inherited 16,000 pounds
from
the mother that she cared for five years.
The Department of Public Prosecutions demands that they
get that 16,000 pounds off her.
So they introduce, proceeds of crime.
Laws.
Now, normally these were introduced, so you could t track down drug kingpins and
Andy: isn't it?
Yeah.
Patrick Butler: And Ferraris and speedboats, armed smugglers and so on.
That's what proceeds of crime laws were introduced for, but they used
that to seize her 16,000 pound
Josh Halliday: and in court she had no representation.
She was there by herself.
Facing a barrister hired by the DWP, in a completely unfamiliar legal
system in in a big scary crown court.
And
at that point you just, you have no chance.
Andy: How many cases have there been of the DWP reclaiming, this benefit
from carers who've over earned
Patrick Butler: currently I think it's, 144,000 carers repaying over 250 million
pounds in overpaid carers allowance.
We also know that, since.
About 2018, around 10,000 unpaid carers have been prosecuted.
Josh Halliday: in the grand scheme of government coffers, not a lot of money.
A quarter of a billion pounds is a lot of money to anyone else though.
Andy: And
Josh Halliday: this is not money that DWP should have let out the door.
this is a, , parliamentary select committee that said these are honest
mistakes by unpaid carers and the National Audit Office has been in to
review it and found all sorts of problems the DW P haven't fixed in six years.
Andy: Now Vivian was working as a carer from, did you say 2014?
That she was, working as, a carer and claiming this benefit.
It is now 11 years after that.
And you've reported in the paper just, a week or so ago
about the case of Oxana Shaha.
this is almost exactly the same story.
But ruining someone else's life in a different bit of the country.
Can you tell me a bit about Oxana?
Josh Halliday: Sana, was a school dinner lady and, she had a zero
hours contract at Sports Direct.
She worked one or two days a week where her caring duties allow, allowed.
She was, she cared for, her, teenage son, Daniel who, has, severe autism They'd
watched this scandal unfold following our coverage that, but like Vivian had told
the DWP years ago that they didn't want to receive car's loans anymore because Oxana
was able to increase her hours at work.
They saw our stories about the car's land scandal, and the people
who'd been caught up and thought, don't worry, can't happen to us.
We've done the right thing.
And then in January this year, they get the letter through the
door, you owe us 10,000 pounds.
. And you need to pay it back immediately.
they requested a mandatory review.
the DWP provided them with, every single week of Oxana N'S earnings over five
years when they said she'd overstepped the earnings threshold, not for
every single one of those five weeks,
Important to say, in average, when you did the calculation, she had earned
one pound 92 more than the threshold over the course of those five years.
In total that amount to 500 pounds more than the threshold.
But she was being told to re repay over 10,000 pounds because
of this cliff edge approach.
it, really is shockingly unfair.
Andy: It's blood boiling.
Really.
it's, I know you're trying to be, you're trying to be objective about it, but
Josh Halliday: really
Andy: it's extraordinary.
And when you speak to
Josh Halliday: people, Patrick, you've done the same.
It really affects you, doesn't it?
These, this is, devastating sums of money.
People who are already living extremely difficult lives, trying to do their best.
these people are coping with the ongoing trauma of caring for a loved
one, thinking they're doing right, and they're doing the government and the
public a favor by looking after them.
And they are, because Oxana put her son or Vivian put her mother into
state care, it would cost us vastly more as a country to look after them.
We've, they've saved us fortunes of the years, but they're being prosecuted for
the most minuscule fractions in the most.
Cruel ways.
It's really difficult to believe It's, happening and it's still ongoing.
Andy: Yes.
I normally ask where did the story go next?
But the, scandals are still just rolling right out the door,
Patrick Butler: hopefully we have some progress.
when our story broke last April may have happened to be during the, the
early stages of the election campaign And very quickly it became example,
made a big deal of this and Labor eventually decided, said they would.
look into it as well.
new government, October Labor says we are going to, commission an independent review
into this, which is good and it's ongoing and it's gonna report in the summer.
labor to its credit also made one or two limited changes,
which to be fair could have happened at any time in the last decade, at a stroke.
which in some ways mitigated some of the effects of this, but the cliff
edge is still there and people are still running up huge overpayments
Josh Halliday: the DDP have only extremely recently, increased their staff
numbers to clear this backlog of carers
in
the last few weeks.
So that means over the next sort
of few
weeks, some months, they'll be unpaid carers getting these same
letters and demands through the door.
They've been sitting there for years, because the DP has only increased
the staff to where it should be.
So.
This, in some senses is the, what we've covered so far is the
tip of the iceberg potentially.
Andy: Thanks to Josh and Patrick, an extraordinary story, and we'll be back
again tomorrow with another episode.