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Of all the devastating passages in Liz Sayce’s 146-page criticism of the government’s failing carer’s allowance system, one above all leaps out. It describes how some felt so “overwhelmed”, ashamed and criminalised they considered killing themselves.
One even investigated whether their fine would be cancelled if they died, only to find the government would still chase their family.
The year-long independent review, sparked by a Guardian investigation, describes in brutal detail how those who have selflessly given up their lives to care for loved ones – saving the state an estimated £184bn a year – have been criminalised by a policy riddled with “systemic flaws” and a culture that assumed “negligence as a default”.
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has vowed to review a decade’s worth of carer’s allowance overpayments as a result. There was, however, no official apology or offer of compensation. Here are the key takeaways from Sayce’s report.
Devastating impact on carers
In interviews with the Guardian over the past 18 months, unpaid carers have described how they were made to feel like criminals by the DWP, shamed into accepting responsibility for an error that – as made clear by the Sayce report – was not their fault.
Nearly three-quarters of the 1 million people who claim £83.30 a week in carer’s allowance are women. Claimants are disproportionately in poverty and 40% are struggling with their own mental or physical health while caring for their loved one. In other words, they are highly vulnerable.
One carer told the inquiry team they “lost weight, I couldn’t sleep” after being told to pay back money to the DWP; another didn’t tell their own family. “I felt so shocked. I felt shame,” they said. Another felt like the government was “kicking them when they are already down”.
This had a direct effect on the health of the carer and those they look after. Some felt so pushed to breaking point that the local authority had to take over the care, at a cost to the state.
It damaged family relationships, Sayce said, citing one carer who said their mother “began to feel like a burden”. Those being looked after “still felt this weight of worry up to the point of their death”, she added.
The ‘benefits trap’ ruthlessly designed to hit internal targets
One element of carer’s allowance was ruthlessly efficient. Officials had access to near real-time alerts – known as the verify earnings and pensions (VEP) alerts service – that pinged whenever a carer breached their weekly earnings allowance.
In an effective system, these would be investigated swiftly and the carer notified and the breach brought to an end. But inside the DWP, officials calculated they only needed to investigate half of these alerts in order to hit their internal targets for preventing fraud. So the decision not to act on these alerts was deliberate, not a policy flaw.
In real terms, this meant that 230,400 unpaid carers who earned more than the weekly allowance between 2018 and 2024 – and were therefore at risk of unknowingly amassing an enormous debt – were not notified until months or years later. One carer had been on the VEP database for five years without any action.
Peter Schofield, the DWP’s most powerful civil servant, told MPs in 2019 that the department was solving the problem of these overpayments. Yet until recently, still only half of these alerts were being checked.
One of the most shocking elements of carer’s allowance is the brutal “cliff edge”, whereby those who overstep the weekly earnings limit by as little as 1p must pay back the entire week’s benefit. This means someone who oversteps the threshold by as little as 1p a week for a year must repay not 52p but £4,331.60, plus a £50 civil penalty.
Sayce was unequivocal that ministers should “remove or reduce the impact” of the cliff edge urgently. The DWP is considering ways to do this, but warned that any policy fix would take time.
How unpaid carers were treated as criminals by default
The review illustrates how unpaid carers were “disproportionately” treated by the DWP as guilty before being proven innocent. “Rather than being penalised where negligence is demonstrated, the approach assumes negligence as a default,” Sayce found.
Sayce, by contrast, found the overwhelming majority of overpayments were a result of official error rather than “wilful rule-breaking”. This echoes a report by MPs six years ago, which concluded that for the most part unpaid carers were being penalised for “honest mistakes”.
The report reveals how claimants of carer’s allowance are hit with more £50 civil penalties than recipients of any other benefit including universal credit, despite there being eight times fewer unpaid carers than the number receiving that benefit.
In total, 852 unpaid carers were referred by the DWP for criminal prosecution in the six years to 2024, with a further 1,510 landed with fines of up to £5,000 (which they must pay in addition to their overpayment). Sayce said these should end for all but the most serious deliberate contraventions.
First introduced in 1976, carer’s allowance is the benefit that time forgot. It is, Sayce said, “an outdated benefit [that] has become ever less fit for purpose” – incompatible with an era of zero-hours jobs and irregular working patterns, and at odds with a time when millions more people provide unpaid care for a population that is both ageing and living longer due to medical advances.
Set this against the “inconsistent and unclear” way the DWP treats carers’ earnings, with “outdated” technology being used by a disjointed department, and you have what one carer described as a “benefit trap”.
Even DWP officials appeared unclear on the rules; when one civil servant was asked by a carer whether private pensions contributions were allowed as an expense, they reportedly replied: “Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. Depends who you get.”
What the DWP will – and won’t – change as a result
In its 37-page response to Sayce’s report, the DWP promised to review decisions relating to approximately 185,000 unpaid carers spanning 10 years to 2025. These will, however, be limited to those in which the carer might not have been penalised had the government assessed their average earnings.
The department, still led by Schofield, said it was “considering longer-term reforms” to modernise carer’s allowance – including replacing the punitive “cliff edge” with a fairer system tapered towards a carer’s earnings.
Pat McFadden, the work and pensions secretary, said the DWP had accepted the vast majority of Sayce’s 40 recommendations. He added: “We inherited this mess from the previous government, but we’ve listened to carers, commissioned an independent review, and are now making good for those affected. Rebuilding trust isn’t about warm words – it’s about action, accountability, and making sure our support works for the people who need it most.”
