The scandal, revealed by the Guardian, didn’t occur in a vacuum. The right’s casting of the poor as parasitic benefits cheats underpins it all
The unpaid carer’s allowance in this country is £81.90 a week. It’s hard to see what serious thought went into arriving at that figure – any calculation of how much it costs to live on, for instance, or how much an unpaid carer is saving the government. Being without discernible curiosity about the lives of unpaid carers, or their contribution to society, it looks very much like a benefit handed down from on high; so at the very least, you’d expect the Department for Work and Pensions to keep on top of its administration.
That is not what happened. Unpaid carers are allowed to earn £151 a week before it affects the benefit. In nearly 30,000 cases last year, people breached that limit, it’s thought almost always unknowingly, and the DWP allowed debts to rack up, sometimes running to thousands of pounds. This won’t be the first time it’s been observed how bureaucracies that seem lackadaisical and unequal to their own responsibilities become unbelievably tenacious and forceful when it comes to the debts of others. It is accused of intimidatory tactics, against people who may have committed only minor breaches, rewarding them with criminal records and penury that has forced some to sell their homes.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
