Sunak under pressure to grant amnesty to unpaid carers fined for rule breaches

More than 150,000 unpaid carers are facing huge fines for minor rule breaches, figures show, as MPs, charities and campaigners demand an immediate amnesty.

Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, joined calls to write off the vast debts incurred by tens of thousands of people who care for sick, disabled and elderly relatives after experts raised concerns about the legality of the government’s approach.

The Guardian can reveal 156,000 unpaid carers are repaying severe penalties – in some cases tens of thousands of pounds – for often unwittingly overstepping the £151-a-week earnings limit while caring for a loved one.

Related: Who are unpaid carers, and why have some had to repay large sums to UK government?

Davey’s call for carer overpayment debts to be waived comes as the latest figures show 11,600 carers hit by the penalties are paying back sums of more than £5,000. About one in five unpaid carers in work breached the strict weekly earnings limit last year, an illustration, campaigners say, of a broken system.

His intervention comes amid growing political pressure on the government over a scandal that has generated widespread outrage at the draconian treatment of unpaid carers, a group routinely praised by ministers as heroes whose sacrifices help prop up the NHS and social care system.

The Guardian has in recent weeks documented the despair and stress experienced by carers forced to pay huge fines – and sometimes prosecuted on fraud charges – after unwitting breaches of earnings limits, which the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has allowed to mount up for months and sometimes years.

Davey said the overpayments should be written off as part of a full government review of the carer’s allowance, which pays £81.90 a week to about 1 million UK unpaid carers. He blamed DWP “incompetence” for allowing overpayments to accumulate. It should stop pursuing carers for old overpayments and cancel outstanding fines.

“Unpaid carers do a remarkable and important job. As a carer myself, I know how rewarding it can be, but also how relentless and exhausting. The government should value and support our wonderful carers, not persecute them and threaten them with prosecution,” said Davey.

Nigel Mills, a Conservative MP on the Commons work and pensions committee, described the government’s hounding of unpaid carers as “unnecessarily cruel” and urged ministers to drop prosecutions for all but the handful of deliberate fraudsters.

He said: “The idea of having prosecutions unless people have clearly done it deliberately is unnecessarily cruel and just a waste of money. They [the DWP] should at least accept partial responsibility and ensure they are fair and balanced.”

The DWP five years ago promised technology to stop overpayments mounting but has failed to grip the problem, leaving carers, most of whom are already in financial hardship, facing bills of thousands of pounds when they are finally identified.

The “cliff-edge” nature of the rules mean that carers must repay their entire weekly £81.90 allowance if they breach the £151-a-week earnings limit by even one penny. This means breaches of a few pounds, will, when left to accumulate, lead to huge fines. Campaigners have called for the cliff edge to be removed.

Related: Why are so many carers being taken to court for benefit fraud?

Helen Walker, the chief executive of Carers UK, which has launched an online parliamentary petition calling for a review of carer’s allowance, backed calls for debts to be waived. “We need a timetable from government about how they are going to improve and reform these systems. We cannot let this issue run and run given the devastating impact on carers’ lives.”

The charity Carers Trust said it was “absolutely right that people unfairly hit with these huge fines should have them written off and this hounding of unpaid carers stops”. It added: “Their honest mistakes have seen them fall foul of a broken and archaic carer’s allowance system.”

A tribunal judge told the Guardian he was “really troubled” by the DWP’s “harsh” approach and the lack of evidence behind many of the penalties.

The judge, who was not authorised to speak publicly, said he ruled in favour of unpaid carers in three-quarters of the carer’s allowance cases before his court, often because the DWP was unable to prove that the person breached its earnings limits.

Many carers do not have the time or money to challenge the penalties, so only a fraction are independently scrutinised by a tribunal judge. In some cases, carers are threatened with a potentially higher bill if they appeal. This means that many thousands of unpaid carers may have repaid huge sums, sometimes plunging them into debt or financial hardship, when there is little evidence of wrongdoing.

The judge said: “The DWP are losing most of [the cases] and they’re making the wrong decision in the first place [to claw back the overpayment]. It’s the department failing to produce enough evidence that persuades me on the balance of probabilities that someone did earn that amount – and that’s because of their expectation that it will be rubber-stamped by the tribunal.”

Meanwhile, the Guardian can reveal a DWP whistleblower who first brought carer’s allowance injustices to public attention five years ago was sacked just months after MPs on the work and pensions select committee had paid tribute to his bravery and tenacity.

The Labour MP Debbie Abrahams, a current committee member who on sat on the 2019 inquiry triggered by the whistleblower’s revelations, called the sacking “extraordinary”. The whistleblower, Enrico La Rocca, was reinstated a year later, in 2021, after the committee chair, Sir Stephen Timms, and others made representations.

Jolyon Maugham, the director of the Good Law Project, a campaign group supporting unpaid carers, said: “The problems the tribunal judge has identified are very serious – and we believe there are even more fundamental issues. Good Law Project would very much like to hear from anyone who has received a demand from DWP in the last three months.”

Ryan Bradshaw, a human rights lawyer with a specialism in welfare benefits and a partner at Leigh Day, said it was “absolutely right” to halt prosecutions “unless someone’s actively committed a fraud and they can prove that to the criminal standard”.

A government spokesperson said: “Carers across the UK are unsung heroes who make a huge difference to someone else’s life. We have increased carer’s allowance by almost £1,500 since 2010 and have also made up to £8.6bn available in additional funding over 2023-24 and 2024-25 to support the social care sector and hospital discharge.

“We are committed to fairness in the welfare system, with safeguards in place for managing repayments, while protecting the public purse. Claimants have a responsibility to consistently inform DWP of any changes in their circumstances that could impact their award, and it is right that we recover taxpayers’ money when this has not occurred.

“Carers in low-income households may be eligible for additional financial support worth up £2,400 a year as we want to ensure the necessary support goes to those most in need.”