Senior DWP civil servant blamed carers for the benefits scandal

One of the highest-ranking civil servants in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is blaming the carers’ allowance crisis on the victims of the crisis.

In an internal blog post meant to only be seen by colleagues, now seen by the Guardian, Neil Couling said that “at the heart” of the scandal is individual carers failing to report changes. It’s almost as if said carers are too busy looking after their loved ones and trying their hardest not to get into debt that they don’t have time to spend hours doing the DWP’s job for them.

DWP higher ups still blaming carers

Couling has been the Director General of DWP services and Fraud since March this year. Prior to that, he oversaw “fraud” in the Universal Credit (UC) programme.

In his post, he admits that one of the main causes of overpayments was the DWP’s “rather byzantine” guidance on the averaging carers’ earnings. However, he ultimately still suggests that these overpayments are because individual carers failed to report changes in their earnings, which broke DWP rules.

He said:

Incidentally what has been missed in all the [media] coverage is that this error (and hands up we made it and we will put it right) affects only a relatively small number of cases and wasn’t the cause of the original complaint. Because at the heart of the overpayment issues in CA is a failure to report changes of circumstances

The government has finally taken the blame

This is despite the government accepting that the DWP’s confusing guidance and reporting process was the main cause of overpayments. Last month, an independent review into the carers allowance scandal found that poor design and longstanding systemic issues within the DWP were the main cause for overpayments. Ultimately, the review found that this could in no way be blamed on carers

In a written statement read by Baroness Sherlock, the minister for disabled people, Sir Stephen Timms, said:

The Review finds that some carers could not have known that they were building up overpayments because it was not clear how their earnings would affect their entitlement, and this lack of clarity was due to issues with operational guidance. The Government accepts this and we will act to put it right.

The review found that some carers had been left so desperate and in distress by being expected to pay back thousands that they were never told they owed, that they contemplated suicide. In the review, carers described how they were expected to work to strict DWP timelines but then made to wait excruciating lengths of time for responses. In some cases, they never received a reply at all. One carer described it as:

like playing a game where only the other side knows the rules

The review especially highlighted how much senior figures within the DWP (such as Couling) were repeatedly warned of the issues in the system and for a decade ignored it.

Disgust at Couling’s comments

Kirsty McHugh, the chief executive of Carers Trust, said about the blog post:

This seems to be a really serious error of judgment. There has been an independent review which came up with some very clear findings. The DWP must now stand by this report and get on with returning money to carers.

While Lib Dem leader Ed Davey, who is himself a carer, said:

I’m disgusted by this blogpost as it shows some senior DWP people have learned nothing about the scale of the misery their policies and procedures inflicted. It’s high time the DWP showed some respect to carers and some awareness of their own gross errors.

DWP boss Pat McFadden was asked about Couling’s comments on the Sunday morning news rounds. He said:

What he [Couling] said is not the position of the department. This was a longstanding problem which had been ignored by the last government, like many other things that we’re having to deal with.

He continued

We commissioned Liz Sayce to do a report on this. She came forward with recommendations and – let me be clear, on behalf of the department – we support her report. We’re going to fix this. We’re going to fix the issues that were wrong with payments to carers. That’s the position of the department.

The original post from Coulding may’ve been removed after the Guardian was tipped off about it, but it still shows that despite the government pledging to make the carers scandal right, some of the most senior figures within the DWP still think the department is doing nothing wrong. This is something disability rights campaigners have fought against for years, and something which will only become more dangerous as benefits are cut even more.

Featured image via the Canary