The TV presenter Kate Garraway has said the UK government’s prosecution of unpaid carers for thousands of pounds in benefit payments has a “horrible echo” of the Post Office scandal.
In an emotional intervention on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, Garraway said many people had pleaded with her to “please do something” to help those being pursued by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Garraway, 57, has spoken movingly about caring for her late husband, Derek Draper, who died in January after being seriously ill for nearly four years with complications linked to long Covid.
The Guardian has revealed that more than 150,000 unpaid carers are repaying penalties, in some cases as high as £20,000, because of the DWP’s failure to notify them when they had inadvertently breached carers’ allowance rules on earnings.
The fines have plunged many into financial hardship, forced some to sell their homes, and led to others being handed criminal convictions.
Garraway compared the DWP’s pursuit of unpaid carers to the Post Office’s treatment of post office operators, who were wrongly accused of stealing money from their branches when the faulty Horizon computer system was to blame.
“The parallel lines are very different, but there is a horrible echo of the Post Office here,” the presenter said on Friday.
“No one has been to prison, but ministers were warned about this scandal and people are still being persecuted, people who are living on £81 a week, often with children as well, and caring, trying to survive on that, are lying awake at night, taking loans out to pay back things that somehow the system has put them in debt for, not intending to but trying to do the right thing by working alongside it.
“And they were warned about it in 2021, nothing has been done and people are being pursued for it.”
The DWP promised five years ago to fix the problems that meant carers were not immediately alerted when they earned more than the £151-a-week limit, which meant they were not eligible for a carer’s allowance.
However, a successions of ministers has failed to fix the issue, leaving tens of thousands of unpaid carers – who save the UK £160bn a year and help prop up NHS and social care services – in financial hardship while they repay the debt.
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A DWP spokesperson said: “Carers across the UK are unsung heroes who make a huge difference to someone else’s life and we have increased the carer’s allowance by almost £1,500 since 2010.
“We are progressing an enhanced notification strategy as part of our ongoing commitment to customer engagement, which will help ensure customers fulfil their obligations to inform DWP when changes in their circumstances have occurred, building on existing communications.
“We are committed to fairness in the welfare system, with safeguards in place for managing repayments, while protecting the public purse.”