Iain Duncan Smith urges ministers to pause carers’ fines

Iain Duncan Smith called on the department to stop hounding people for the repayments and investigate its own responsibility for the errors, some of which have left unpaid carers with criminal records and deep in debt.

The Guardian has revealed that carers are being forced to pay huge sums to the government and threatened with criminal prosecution after unwittingly breaching earnings rules by just a few pounds a week.

People who claim the £81.90-a-week carer’s allowance for looking after loved ones are being pursued by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) to pay back money that has been wrongly overpaid to them, in some cases running to more than £20,000, or risk going to prison.

“The Department of Work and Pensions needs to write off these fines, stop hounding this country’s devoted unpaid carers and focus instead on fixing that system.”

Paul Streets, its chief executive, said there needed to be “wholescale reform” of a system that was unfairly punishing unpaid carers for unknowingly exceeding the earnings limit.

The Liberal Democrats, several Tory MPs and the Centre for Social Justice, a centre-right thinktank, have urged the government to stop pursuing carers and accept it was to blame for the overpayments.