A very warm welcome to this one-off inquiry session into carer’s benefits beyond the Sayce review. It is a pleasure to welcome Liz Sayce, who was the independent reviewer of the overpayment of carer’s allowance. I am very grateful to you, Liz. Would you like to make any opening remarks before we kick off with some questions?

Yes, thank you so much for inviting me to come today. I am pleased that you are looking at this issue. It was very positive that the Government accepted many of my recommendations and I think it is really important that they are tracked. I notice the Department recently said that it is committing to reporting every six months on the progress it is making against the recommendations to you and the Public Accounts Committee. It will be public knowledge and available for everybody to see how far they have got and the pace. With some of the issues, there is ambiguity about what exactly it means that they have agreed to a recommendation, and in some cases they have put the timescale into the longer term. It is important that there is ongoing scrutiny and tracking. That is really all I want to say to begin with. It is perhaps also useful to remind you that I no longer have a formal role, so I am talking primarily from the having done the review and how I see the picture now.

Absolutely. It is in that context that we would like to ask you some questions, but thank you for clarifying that and what we should be aware of. This Committee, in its different iterations, has shown considerable concern about carer’s allowance and overpayments going back to 2018. Could you characterise, from your knowledge and experience, the progress has been over the last eight years?

It is certainly true that, after the report of the Work and Pensions Committee in 2019, some discrete things happened—there were some improvements in communications to carers, for example. What didn’t happen was there was no overarching plan to address the Committee’s recommendations to resolve the issues—really the injustices—that carers had faced with suddenly being asked to pay back overpayments, some of which involved large sums. There was no overarching plan and nobody senior tracking it. By contrast, there is now a set of actions against the recommendations that have been accepted, and a senior responsible officer has been appointed who is accountable for delivery, with regular progress reports. That should make a significant difference. In summary, you can bear in mind that there was a pandemic and that there were other priorities and so on, but there was also a National Audit Office report in 2019 in which very serious issues were identified, and they were not new, actually. There had been a whistleblower earlier; these issues had been raised before. Relatively little happened, and it did not happen in a strategic or sustained way, between 2019 and the present day, with the commissioning of this review and then a commitment to take some action.

That is very helpful indeed. Do you think that there has been a change in attitude and behaviour within the Department, that there is now a commitment to address the issues that we have seen?

It is really welcome that Government accepted or partially accepted almost all the recommendations. Some things have already happened. For example, in the period after 2019, only about 50% of the VEPS—alerts on employment and pay—that came over from HMRC to the Department for Work and Pensions were actually being analysed and looked at, with the result that, for some people, the debt just rose and rose and they did not know about it. Now there is a commitment to look at 100% of them, and they have cleared the backlog, so as far as I can see, there should be no need for those sorts of debts to build up in future, and if there are errors on the part of the individual or the Department, they should be quickly identified and resolved. Things like that are happening and I think you can see some progress.

If I could interject just very briefly. Clearly, 38 out of the 40 recommendations were accepted by Ministers, yet there was a surprising blog by a senior official that seemed to indicate that the fault was with the carers for their overpayments. That was clearly not what you were saying and not what Ministers said. Was it your view that there was a disconnect between Ministers and officials?

I found a kind of mixed culture. I was really distressed by that blog, as I am sure many people were. What we were hoping for at that point was that senior people would share with colleagues across the Department the seriousness of this, what had been learned and what would be put right, not an attempt to almost minimise it or again to place the responsibility back on to carers, as if it was their fault, which the review clearly found that it was not. I can say more about that if you want me to. When I was doing the review, I found officials at different levels, including at the frontline, who were serious about wanting to improve things, trying to be more empathetic and so on. Since then, I can see that there are some people who want to learn and make change, but there are also forces of resistance, which worry me. It is about culture. It is also about a big Department based on rules where things sometimes happen very slowly. It is hugely important that the leadership of the Department sets that culture as it needs to be. It was good to see that almost as soon as that blog came out, Ministers immediately said that is not the Government position. I was very relieved to see that—I just happened to see it on TV. Then the permanent secretary reinforced that, which was good to see, but I think there is a job to be done to make sure that everybody is on the same page on this.

Indeed. What should that job involve?

Yes, that is a really good question. Culture change is a difficult thing, isn’t it? The first thing is that there needs to be a modelling from senior people across the Department about the importance of learning and of getting things right for the people who are claiming the benefits. Maybe we will come on to this, but I found that sometimes decisions were made too much in isolation—for example this business of looking at only 50% of the VEPS alerts. Strategically, from a senior perspective across the Department, thinking about the objectives of carer’s allowance and what had happened with the 2019 reports, it seems extraordinary that you would think it was acceptable to look at only 50%. If you look at it from the point of view of recouping money—it is public money and we must get it back—and from a fraud and error point of view, then I can see it makes sense, but that is such a narrow perspective. I think this is about making sure that there is a join-up and that the real values, the important values of serving people, and the purposes of carer’s allowance are front and centre and constantly reinforced by senior people right across the Department.

Thank you. You may be aware that this Committee has done a lot around trying to get the focus on safeguarding across the Department as well, so the points you are making really resonate with us. Again, to try to drive this point home, can you describe what the human impact was on carers who were accused of deliberately seeking more money than they would otherwise get from carer’s allowance because of the deductions and so on that they had calculated?

Yes, there were multiple human impacts. First of all, it was just the financial impact of having to pay back. People talked about, “I can no longer afford the small things like going out with the person I care for.” People took on the shame, even when they did not think they had done anything wrong. They were afraid to talk about it to their families and friends. I am very grateful to carers’ organisations who brought people together to share experiences. People talked about being overwhelmed by bureaucracy—it is not a simple system. People talked about the impact on their health, about not sleeping and the major impact on their own mental health, which then affected their family members and their kids and the person they cared for. It was multifaceted, and people used terms like “trauma”, and, not lightly, being “made to feel like a thief.” I think this was a really horrendous experience for people the state seeks to support in that vital caring role. It is a consensual thing that society values carers and the contribution that carers make. This felt like the absolute opposite of that.

You make that point so well, Liz; thank you very much. Finally, you commented on data collection and DWP not having or publishing much up-to-date information on this. What should it be collecting as a matter of routine?

Yes, I was really surprised that on the overpayments, for example there was no analysis of questions like, “Does this apply more to people who are in work or not? What are the issues with overpayments?” That is not only for publication but for the Department itself to understand and learn so that it can make good policy. There were gaps, and I think that is something to do with carer’s allowance perhaps not being a huge priority at a time when universal credit was a huge issue and there were other priorities. It would be very useful to have data on the problems with overpayments by category. Are they about averaging? Are they about allowable expenses? Are they about people starting a new job and not telling the Department? What are they about? Are they about back pay? All sorts of things. It would be useful to have ongoing tracking of civil penalties and administrative penalties. I found through the review the extraordinary fact that 46% of civil penalties issued by the Department went to people on carer’s allowance. I thought surely somebody in the Department would have found this statistic and asked, “What is going on here?” It is a relatively small benefit in terms the numbers of people claiming it. If you looked at that for a moment, you would think, “This can’t be right. What is going on here?”

Exactly, yes.

It is about the importance of collecting data for themselves and then the importance of transparency about some of that data, which I hope that this Committee and others will want to ask for and see.

Thank you so much. I will hand over to Joy Morrissey.

Thank you for your report, because it is very useful and helpful. Your review found that the operational guidance on averaging earnings published in 2020 appeared to not have been developed with testing or input from the DWP policy or legal team. Do you think that this is reflective in how the DWP has approached carer’s allowance more broadly, and what would be a sensible approach to averaging earnings moving forward?

Yes, the fact that that guidance was put out—again, it is an issue of whether there was enough joined-up senior strategic oversight of that guidance. I think it was signed off without enough of that. What happened then was that averaging of earnings went from something that happened to something that members of staff in DWP said to me was “vanishingly rare” or “I have never known a case,” or “once in a blue moon.” That should have set off some alarm bells as well, incidentally. I am making a general point about this, making sure that decisions are really grounded in the purposes of carer’s allowance in values and are joined up across the different parts of the Department. We know that guidance on averaging has been revised, but we do not know exactly how it has been revised. I also recommended that the regulations should be changed, as they are very ambiguous. They were passed in 1996, 30 years ago; as we are all aware, there have been a lot of changes in the patterns of care and work since then. What I think would make sense is that people can work in a flexible labour market; they can know if they take this shift, they will be better off or they will be worse off—simple things, otherwise you cannot run your life, really. They should be able to take work around their caring responsibilities in a way that works for them and works for the person they care for. I recommended, for example, that it should be possible for people to have a say in what period the averaging should be over. Some people wanted it aligned with the tax year, and there are complexities about that. At the moment, I do not know whether that will be in the guidance or indeed whether the regulations will be changed. I think there is a need to make it much easier to average. We know that people have assumed, because it said on gov.uk, “Your earnings may be averaged,” it would be over a year or they assumed that if they worked less this week, because perhaps it was half-term or some other reason, and then they worked more next week, that that would all be fine because of this averaging point. Then it was not fine, and they did not find out for some time. There is something about making it much easier and also making sure that things like if you get some back pay or the employer has made a mistake and then they pay you what they should, that does not count as an overpayment because it was pay relevant to a period of months. I don’t know how much technical detail you want me to go into, but I think it is really important to find out, since the guidance has changed, what is now happening on averaging of earnings. Is it becoming more common? If not, why not? The staff now have to record the decision they make on averaging and why they made it. I think that should be reported upon, in general terms. It should be asked whether and when the Department is going to review and potentially revise those regulations. Different tribunals have interpreted the regulations differently. It is not exactly a clear set of regulations fit for the future.

On the back of that averaging earnings, do you think that that is in co-ordination with the 46% of the issue with the penalties? Do you think the lack of a joined-up, regulated approach to averaging earnings is accounting for the penalties that we are seeing?

I think it is a factor that is definitely part of it. There will be other factors like people not understanding allowable expenses, for example. There is a small range of factors, but what I heard in the review, from carers and DWP staff, was that lack of clarity on averaging was an absolutely fundamental issue.

On the back of that, they are saying they will modernise the IT system, and this would provide foundations for earnings and treatment for carer’s allowance. How confident are you that DWP will make those timely changes and that their IT system will reflect that?

At the moment, you have IT systems that do not talk to each other. For example, if you claim Universal Credit as well as carer’s allowance, as many people do, you might have an overpayment of carer’s allowance but a corresponding underpayment of Universal Credit, because they should net off each other. You do not get both of those bits of information at the same time, necessarily. To give another example, you might have told Universal Credit about a change in your circumstances, so you think you have told DWP. You might still—I thought this was rather extraordinary—get a civil penalty for not having told the carer’s allowance unit.

That is very poor.

I recommended that that should not happen, and they have somewhat accepted it, but it is kind of long term as they sort out the systems. I think it would be good to keep on top of that. I hope you do not mind me giving suggestions on areas that you might want to ask the Department about when they do their six-monthly reports and so on. I did not look at all the different IT priorities that exist across the Department, but that issue about the Universal Credit and carer’s allowance systems not being compatible to talk to each other has been known about for a long time, and it has not been addressed. It is in the list of things to be addressed, but the question is when. It costs money and there are other priorities, but it seems to me that there is an injustice here that needs to get up the priority list.

Thank you so much for coming to speak to us today, Liz. I think what is quite interesting about the previous question is that sense that Universal Credit rolled six benefits into one, and this sits outside of that, yet it can be claimed at the same time. That doesn’t really make any sense, does it? That is quite an odd thing to have tried to deal with when we are looking at the other range of benefits as a taper rate. What progress do you think DWP has made with the recommendations on looking at a taper rate and being in the discovery phase,?

I am afraid I do not really have full information. I know that they have kicked off the discovery phase, and that has been happening, so that is positive. Clearly, it will be important to keep track of that, and I will certainly be interested to see how quickly that is progressed, because it would make such a huge difference. When we looked at it, at that time—the rates may have changed—you would have to go from £196 a week to something like £279 to be better off, bearing in mind that if you go over £196 you lose your carer’s allowance. You are in a kind of benefits trap. I heard from somebody just a week or two ago who said she had changed jobs three times to avoid pay rises. Is this sensible for the growth of the economy, for people’s aspirations? It doesn’t make any sense, does it? There is a real problem about people saying, “Well, there is no point in doing a degree,” or “I am a qualified teacher but I am taking a lower-paid job, because I’ll be slightly better off that way with carer’s allowance.” There are real disincentives here to progression and so on. It is important that the taper progresses swiftly and I am sorry I do not know further details.

No, that is a really useful point. One of the things that has to be recognised is somebody caring for another person might not be forever as well.

Exactly.

Looking at future employment opportunities, having the possibility for a teacher to do two extra days of supply in term time only and the sense of averaging, all sorts to be pulled together as something that feels more straightforward, would be super helpful. Of the suggestions made to the review on how DWP could introduce a taper rate, which were the ones that you were more persuaded by?

The work on the taper approach had already started in DWP when I was doing the review, so I was not asked to look at that specifically. What I was concerned about, given that it seemed to be quite a long-term project, was whether there was anything that could be done in the interim. There were a couple of suggestions in the report for consideration that could be workarounds while the systems, digital and legislative changes were taken forward. One such suggestion was that you could start implementing a taper before a digital solution, with a clerical workaround. There is already clerical time looking at allowable expenses, so this could be built in. That was one idea. Another idea was if you accepted the 52‑weeks notion, you could look back over 52 weeks and say, “Okay, over the 52 weeks, by how much has this person gone over the limit?” That would take some legislative change, but I was asking for more imaginative ways of doing something more quickly. I am not aware that the Department is pursuing those ideas, but that is something to ask them about.

There are already tried and tested ideas within DWP; so the 17 weeks, if you are on Universal Credit, the engagement with Universal Credit is via your workbook. There are already things in place within the system. Were there any that you felt that it would make sense to align with?

Yes, definitely. The carers who were also on Universal Credit sometimes spoke very positively about the Universal Credit system in comparison, the way the taper worked, and also the fact that they could log on to their journal and see exactly what was happening. They could see the status of their claim and how the taper worked. One of the big problems with carer’s allowance is that there is a bit of a portal that you can submit some things to—incidentally, some people are still having to send in payslips and all sorts of really archaic approaches—but you do not know what has happened. You do not know. On Universal Credit, there are still debates about where you set the taper up, where you set it and so on, which I know DWP is looking at. I think that the journal has met with some approval; it is not flawless, but it is a much more user-friendly system than the system for carer’s allowance. If you do not know which expenses have been allowed and which have not, how do you know if you have gone over the limit or not? People kept saying to us, “Well, we would report a change of circumstances if we knew it was a change of circumstances, but we don’t.”

As a former trade union official, I know all too well the concern that people have around the impact of pay rises and the interaction with their benefits, so what you are saying is interesting. On your recommendation to the Department that it publish standards for the Department and its customers, it has said that it already has a customer charter in place. Do you think that that charter adequately sets out the sort of standards you would expect them to have?

I do not think it is strong enough, really. For example, on response times, one of the things that came through in the review was that sometimes, and maybe for understandable reasons, DWP did not respond very promptly. Somebody would communicate by letter or whatever and they did not get a response in a swift timescale, but they were expected to respond within specified timelines. The charter says something like—don’t quote me, these might not be the exact words—“We will reply as soon as we can.” So then you think, well, can the carer reply as soon as they can? There should be a reciprocal kind of rights and responsibilities here. I would like to see it strengthened. I may be wrong about this and you might want to ask the carers’ organisations, but I think there might be some discussions going on about that. It would be good to involve carers in what is missing from that charter and how it could be strengthened.

Do you think that the Department adheres to the charter in how it communicates with its customers? I understand that you don’t think that it is a very strong document in the first place.

We can see that there is satisfaction among carer’s allowance claimants. For a lot of people, it works okay. We are talking about a group of carers for whom it definitely has worked anything but okay. I suppose the loose wording makes it slightly difficult to pin that down. On communications, I recommended, for example, that there should be something in between a very basic bit of information for people on gov.uk and the decision maker’s guide, which is pretty technical. There should be scenarios, and people should be enabled to really understand. I think the spirit of the charter is not quite there in communications. There are people in the carer’s allowance unit with real expertise. If people ring up, the response times have improved. The telephony was contracted out, but the contracted-out organisation can’t put people through to somebody. The contracted-out service works well if you want to say you have changed your address or something really straightforward, but they cannot make decisions because they are not civil servants. So then they have to send in a memo to the carer’s allowance unit, who will then get back to you. If you are deemed to be vulnerable, they should get back to you within 24 hours. If you are not deemed to be vulnerable, experience varies as to how fast that is. That is the sort of thing where it seems to me there should be standards. I am not sure if you could say that it is not complying with the charter. I would have to look back at the wording of the charter. People need to get through to the answer to their question in a reasonable timescale. It is also not very convenient having to phone several times or wait for calls back when you are living the sort of life that we are talking about here, where you are caring for 35 hours a week and you are working. It is not straightforward.

It doesn’t sound unreasonable. On the basis that the charter is there, the Government have said that that is what exists. You recommended something else. Given that the charter is there, and it is currently not adequate in your view, what would you like to see built into it that would more reflect some of the standards that you would expect? Obviously, I appreciate that you have referenced reciprocal expectations, but is there anything else specifically that you think the Government could include in the charter at the moment that would help?

Letting people know promptly and transparently about decisions and why they have been made. For example, the Government have committed to telling people how their earnings have been averaged. That would be very helpful because that has not been happening. There is quite a lot of detail in what needs to be in a charter. At least give people, carer’s allowance recipients specifically, some expectation that they will be able to understand how their claim and the response to their claim has been worked out. Also if there is an overpayment, they should be informed quickly. Clearly, that has been a really serious problem. These debts built up to thousands and thousands of pounds in some cases, which people could ill afford, and they did not know they were building up. That is not acceptable. It should be possible to meet that now that they have got the HMRC alert system working to 100%.

Thank you for coming in this morning. There is a duty on carers to report changes in their circumstances. There is a duty on DWP to inform their expectations in a timely and clear way. Do you think that the DWP has the balance right in expectations on carers?

I had probably better talk from the position of when I was doing the review, bearing in mind that there are some changes in train. It seemed to me that at that point the balance was not right. That is because people have a duty, a responsibility, to report change of circumstances. Quite right too, you are receiving public money in a benefit and I agree with that. For that to be fair and for you really to have that responsibility, there has to be information and communication on what you have to report in that is clear, unambiguous and consistent. I don’t think it was any of those on averaging and also on allowable expenses, but the Government did not agree about that. Certainly on averaging, evidently there was guidance that did not comply with the legal regulations, so people didn’t know what they had to report. I think that is why so many people got civil penalties, disproportionately as compared to people on other benefits who also have to report change of circumstances. It just was not clear enough. On allowable expenses, incidentally, I recommended there could be better alignment with HMRC. They have allowable expenses, but they are slightly different. There are cases where it is sensible for them to be different. For example, there is an allowable expense that you might pay for somebody to be there to care for the person you care for while you are at work. That is very specific to carer’s allowance, but most of the other things, like equipment, uniform, travel while you are at work, these sorts of things, are also there in HMRC but they are different. Why are they different? That is just confusing. People thought it was one, not the other. I think there are improvements in train and in the planning, and I am very pleased that the Department is working with carers’ organisations to look at the communications and aim to improve them. That could make a big difference, but when I was there looking at it, there was not that, so it was not a fair area of responsibility. To go back to the Chair’s question about the blog, that is partly why I think it caused such concern, that there was this implication again that it was carers who had not done what they should have done. Actually, that is what carers were told when they were given the debt and given this £50 civil penalty, which people felt was a real insult. It is very important to say that there was a huge number of carers who inadvertently went over the earnings limit because they did not understand the system, and that was because it was not easy to understand and it was not clear.

The most concerning thing about that blog post that, as you say, put the blame squarely on the carers, is that we only found out about it by accident. From the outside, it looked like a very different world in that they accepted that balance, that criticism. I am a big fan of the civil service, I back them all the way, but it is concerning that we did not know that. Do you think that there is a culture problem at DWP that they are capable of reforming themselves by themselves, or do they need stronger outside scrutiny?

It is very difficult for me to say about DWP in general because I only looked at this case in particular. I think there are some senior people who are serious about making the changes that are needed. I felt that sometimes there was an effort to almost minimise what had gone wrong, almost to reassure staff that they had not done anything, and that is the wrong thing to do as a leader in such a circumstance. You need to own the problem, explain why the system was not right. The staff are working in an imperfect system—a very imperfect system in that case—so there is another way to make the staff feel all right about it and bring them with you on the journey to where you want to really get this right. It needs very proactive leadership from the top. You also need distributed leadership around that is reinforced in every team and so on. I do not think I can really answer that question about DWP in general.

As an example—

As an example, it might help them to have some external support with the culture change piece. I think it is important with culture change to understand where you are, to understand what you are doing to shift the culture and to track it. The senior team needs to be on that case. It needs to be a bit more systematic than just good intent.

Thanks for coming in. Two fairly short and succinct questions from me. The first one is: how satisfied were you with the Government’s response to recommendations to reclassify some overpayments as official error?

I was pleased that Government have agreed to reassess a lot of claims and, in some cases, to write off debts and repay them in whole or in part, including repaying, where merited, civil penalties and administrative penalties. That is quite a big thing for a Government Department to do, so that is positive. I suppose the devil will be in the details. We are hoping that fairly soon, I do not know when, the reassessment process will start. I think the critical question will be what are the criteria for that reassessment? I know they have done this sample of 1,000 cases and come up with an estimate of 26,000 people. I have not seen the breakdown of that 1,000. What were the other categories as well as the averaging? What kind of averaging is being included here? I want to be assured about over what periods can averaging occur in relation to back pay, employer error. I think that the criteria will match the new guidance. Is the new guidance good enough, and will these criteria be good enough? Who will get their debts written off and who will not? Will that be fair, and will it redress injustice sufficiently? I suppose those are the questions that are in my mind. I do not know the answers until that process and the way that it is being done become clearer. I think they are very important questions because Government have done a big thing by saying, “Yes, this was wrong, and we will repay some debts and write some debts off,” but it is so important that they get this right now and do not fall at this hurdle.

Thanks. Are there any unanswered questions that were not included in the terms of reference of the review, or explored in previous reviews or inquiries that you believe warrant further investigation?

There are quite a few things that are in the review—I hope this is not too much of a sidetrack—where it is not quite clear yet whether Government have accepted or partially accepted a recommendation but what exactly they are going to do might not yet be quite clear, or they have rejected a recommendation but they have said they will do something. For example, on fraud and error statistics—given what we have just been saying about people being made to feel like a thief and the raising of civil penalties—I was concerned that in the official statistics, £100 million or £166 million, something like that, was classified as fraud of carer’s allowance overpayment. That is on the basis of a definition of fraud, which is something like, “You should reasonably have known.” Sorry, I can check the detail, if you want to follow up on it. It was about what you should have done. That differs from the HMRC definition of fraud, which has something about deliberate intent in it. It is not fraud to a layperson if you inadvertently go over an earnings limit and do not report a change of circumstance because you did not know what you had to report. That is not fraud to my mind, but it might be classified as fraud in statistics and that distorts public debate. The Government rejected that recommendation, but they did say that they would try to put some more explanatory detail into statistics. It would be good if they did that. The Government also rejected one on doing an internal audit. This is slightly relevant to the culture and processes point to make sure that the set-up is now well positioned to take forward the recommendations and improvements. They rejected that on the basis that they had enough insight from the Work and Pensions Committee report, the NAO report and my review. It would be very interesting to know how they are using those insights to improve. There are lots of things like that, and there are others in the detail of the recommendations. On things that go beyond the recommendations, carer’s allowance is 50 years old this year. It was developed in a very different era when most women did not work, when the pattern of the labour market was very different. Caring has changed since then. There are lots of things, I am sure, to look at with carer’s allowance. That was beyond my brief, but maybe the next session can address some of them.

Thank you, Liz. This has been absolutely fascinating and really important for how we seek to hold the Government to account on their commitments. Witnesses: Emily Holzhausen CBE, Kirsty McHugh, Professor Anne McMunn and Dr Maxine Watkins.

Welcome to the second panel of this one-off oral evidence session on carer’s benefits beyond the Sayce review. We are delighted to welcome Emily Holzhausen, Director of Public Affairs at Carers UK, Kirsty McHugh at the Carers Trust, Professor Anne McMunn from University College London, and Dr Maxine Watkins from the University of Birmingham. Thank you again for joining us. I will start. You obviously heard Liz mention coming up to the 50th anniversary of the first iteration of carer’s allowance, the invalid care allowance. How do you think we have progressed and is the current system of carer’s benefits is fit for purpose? Who would like to start with that?

I would be delighted to start.

Fantastic.

It was our organisation, the National Council for the Single Woman and Her Dependants, that fought very hard for this allowance and got it eventually in 1976. The level of it, if we look at next year, £86.45 per week, for which you have to provide 35 hours of care, works out at about £2.47 per hour. It is the lowest benefit of its kind. As Liz has said, things have moved on, time has moved on. The interaction of carer’s allowance with Universal Credit is not perfect, and we see about 62% of carers who get carer’s allowance are in poverty. There are complex interactions, it overlaps with the state pension and there are easier ways that we could look at that. It is high time we had a review after 50 years of the benefit. It is an extremely important benefit that has enormous value. We are an organisation of carers, run by carers. Even though it is a very low benefit, and carers think that is a disgrace, to be honest, it has enormous value for them because it values what they do. There are all sorts of things we would like to see changed: the level and means-tested benefits like carer element to go up, better interaction with benefits for older carers, people caring for multiple people and students. There are some changes in Scotland that have been brought forward that are positive. It is a long-standing call for us now to have a review. The last major set of benefits changes were around 2000, and they were quite significant at the time, but I think the evidence today will show that we need one of those, a refresh and review.

I completely agree with that. My organisation, Carers Trust, runs local services for carers around the country, including in your constituencies. Go and see them if you haven’t already. I came into this area four years ago. I looked at carer’s allowance and thought, “What is this? What are the philosophical underpinnings of this? What is it trying to achieve?” I was talking to someone a few weeks ago who had been involved decades ago in carer’s allowance policy and he said, “You have to understand, Kirsty, that this was introduced as pin money for what were then called spinsters—people who did not have a husband to look after them but they were looking after maybe their elderly parents and it was thought important to give them an independent piece of money, pin money.” It is extraordinary. So what is carer’s allowance trying to do? Is it about helping people balance work and care? Is it about income replacement? It doesn’t know what it is trying to do. That is why it does not relate easily to any other benefits and needs a complete and utter look at again, interlinked to a lot of other policy areas, whether that is education, retirement and so on. It is a bit of a mess.

Following on from the comments about the low level of carer’s allowance, through our research with the Centre for Care, we found that the low level not only had a negative impact on people’s material wellbeing, but it also had a negative impact on their wider sense of wellbeing. They felt undervalued for the work that they were doing and they felt that the contribution that they were making to society was not recognised. It is just a point to note as well that the low payment can impact on the way people feel.

Yes, fair point.

Our project is focused primarily on the impact on people’s health of providing unpaid care at different stages of the life course. We have not investigated carer’s allowance per se, but when we talk to carers, it is very much in line with what has been said about the levels simply not being enough to provide adequate financial support for them.

Thank you all. Obviously, you listened to Liz earlier. What do you think of the Government’s response to her review?

I am happy to go first. I gave evidence to this Committee when it last did its inquiry. I have to say that Liz has done an extraordinary piece of work, with 38 out of 40 recommendations accepted. It was unprecedented within the history of carer’s allowance that Government have admitted a mistake and the Secretary of State and Ministers have said very clearly that they want to rebuild trust with carers. That is so important. DWP is an absolutely critical service for people who rely on it day in, day out, and that trust has been badly broken, so we really welcome that. I think for some of it we have to look under the hood of the car, if you like, to see what exactly the different things mean. There are some important building blocks, for example the reassessment exercise, and what Liz said about transparency is critically important—letters being changed, for example, to tell people not just how much the overpayment is but how this was worked out and over what period. We run an information advice service that responds to about 20,000 inquiries from carers a year. It is a guessing game for us to try to understand how that overpayment is made up, so how do you then challenge it? There are some very important practical things. There are a few areas where the Government did not accept the recommendations, like allowable expenses. The Government did not accept that the information was unclear, but our test for the information, of all of it, is can a carer know where they stand with their income? If I take that shift, will I go over the limit? Allowable expenses are poorly understood, and really you do not know until the DWP has come back to say yes. There are three areas where it is very clear but, nevertheless, there are a few outstanding areas, such timescales around taper and modernising the programme, which are critically important, but we have to commend the Government for setting up the independent review in the first place.

Again, I agree with that. I want to pick up the point on culture that you asked Liz about. Emily and I went to see the Preston carer’s allowance unit, where they will be looking at the impact of the independent review and putting that into operation, but they do the processing generally. It was fascinating because we found there was a lot of frontline staff who seemed really dedicated to carers, really understood their circumstances, a lot of picking up the phone and talking to them, and we saw very supportive cultures. However, they are completely let down by antiquated, extraordinary computer systems, which you would not believe. In this day and age, you should be able to tell the Government once. A lot of carers feel that that is the case. Of course, that is not the way it operates. If you are a frontline staff member in DWP, you have to look across different systems. Of course, the rules for carer’s allowance are really complicated, even before you get to averaging. I think that there is that typical policy-frontline work disconnect that can go on, and the job of the DWP is to make sure they strengthen that communication internally, so that what the staff are telling them does influence the policy changes there.

Thank you. Maxine, do you have anything to add? Dr Watkins: I don’t have anything to add on that, but I want to highlight something that delighted me, which was in the foreword to the Government’s response. I saw a statement about the Government’s commitment to creating a national care service, which I recognise is outside DWP’s remit but I think is crucial. I am hoping that Baroness Casey’s review on adult social care will be looking at that, and it is really imperative that unpaid carers and support for unpaid carers is part of that work.

Thank you, everyone. There are about 4,500 people in receipt of carer’s allowance in St Helens, and what I have heard so far chimes with what I hear from them. Could you describe for me, in your view, the immediate and long-term financial impact of caring on individuals? Maxine, I know you have just co-authored a report very recently on this subject, so maybe if we start with you.

Yes, thanks. I probably first should say that in our research we spoke with carers at different life stages, and we talked to them in depth about their caring journeys: their life before caring, the point that they started caring, the decisions that they made around work and care and what influenced those decisions, and the financial implications of those, both short and longer-term. Obviously, there are the short-term out-of-pocket expenses that we know about that carers have to make, such as petrol, shopping for the person they care for, shorter-term adjustments at home and things like that. We were particularly interested about the risks to future financial wellbeing, for example for a carer in midlife. I am thinking particularly of one carer called Emily. She was caring for her mum and was a carer in midlife. She had multiple episodes of caring across her life. As she was reaching retirement, she realised that although she had done 40 years of service where she worked, she had only 25 reckonable years of service for her pension. Coming up to retirement, she realised that her pension was going to be inadequate, and that was really stressing her. She had not really thought about it until that time, as so many people don’t. There are those kind of examples of if she had known in pounds and pence the difference it would make to go part-time at the point of caring. I don’t want to stop anybody who wants to go part-time and care, but I do think that people should have full information about the financial implications of that. Perhaps employers could give some guidance in pounds and pence terms: what difference will this make to your pension? People are making decisions then with that knowledge. I think longer term for young carers, which we might speak about separately later, we talked to carers who were choosing to not take progression opportunities. There was a young apprentice carer who wanted to do extra study to be able to progress in the future but did not feel that that would be sustainable with his care work. There are lots of longer-term financial consequences that perhaps carers do not think about at the initial point of deciding to care.

I will add that the quantitative data really back up the financial impact of care. The most rigorous study I have seen so far on the income penalty of care, done by the Centre for Care and Maxine’s colleagues, showed a 45% impact of care on income. The work that we have done has shown that the income differences between carers and non-carers are stronger in midlife, the kinds of years when people will be combining care with employment. I think that is a real area for focus.

It is about poverty, inability to work and so on. Our studies showed that about 40% of unpaid carers were forced out of the workplace and an additional 23% had to radically reduce their hours. The DWP stats show 17% of people on carer’s allowance work, but a lot more could work if they had the right support and there was flexible employment and carer’s allowance enabled that. We did a piece of work with an organisation called Cambridge Econometrics, looking at basically the cost to the Treasury, whether it is benefits, lost tax takes, but also the loss in household income. Probably about 500,000 working-age people, carers, might be able to do some level of paid work if we made the system more flexible. That picked up two groups in particular: women aged 50 to 64, but also young adult carers. Some 70,000 of those aged 16 to 24 are not working and should be economically active at that point in their lives. There are some big figures there, those who are really impacted by having a heavy caring role.

I agree with everything that colleagues have said. This is also heavily gendered. The vast majority of people in receipt of carer’s allowance are women. That peak age of 50 to 64 is just critical for pensions, so we see carers being underpensioned. Last year we published a piece of work asking carers, “What would you have done differently?” which speaks to Maxine’s work. They fell into four groups: I would have stayed in work for longer; I would have put more into my pension; I would have found out about my benefits and entitlements and other support available sooner, and, I would have recognised myself as a carer quicker. Those four are key areas where we need to invest in prevention. The labour market, what employers do, is just as important as what DWP and other agencies do.

You have probably already answered this, but maybe you want to sum it up. How well would you say support for carers supports the Department’s responsibility to help people plan and save for later life?

It is very interesting. If we look at some of the work, for example, every year about one third of the population of carers starts caring and one third stops caring; that is 12,000 people a day, but it is very unpredictable. When you look at the polling, most people expect to care at some point in life, but it is very difficult to plan for. Our systems and processes are not set up through DWP or through society to plan for that. Carers Week did a piece of work asking carers whether they had a choice about caring, and 62% said they did not have a choice because no other care alternatives were available. People are bounced into it because of duty and love and having no alternative. That is why we need a modern system and we need employers to be supporting carers more. Paid carer’s allowance as an entitlement, as a right, for example, would help people to juggle work and care. We have very solid evidence on that. The flexible working changes that are being brought in by the Employment Rights Bill are very valuable, but we still need to raise awareness in that age group.

But it is also about employment support systems, which are by and large funded by DWP. That bit is also important.

Good morning, everybody. Emily, you referenced earlier the situation in Scotland, and we know that carers in Scotland receive additional support through the carer’s allowance supplement, which is soon to be the Scottish care supplement. Can you say a little bit more on the impact that supplement has had on carers in Scotland?

Sure. It is worth approximately £11 a week and it is paid in two payments, six monthly. The Scottish Government are moving from six monthly to weekly or monthly, based on what carers have said. It will not come as a surprise to you that people on low incomes—as MPs, you will know this—find regular payments much easier to manage. They have done a study of 114 people and it has made a difference. There are high levels of poverty in Scotland anyway, so you can’t compare like with like with England. It has made a material difference to people. People say that their recognition is more positive in terms of mental health and wellbeing, as Maxine and Anne mentioned. They are also spending on things that other people take for granted, like a small trip out—breaks are critically important for carers’ wellbeing—but they are also spending it on necessary bills, paying the everyday costs, travel, heating bills and medical equipment, where costs are high or the state falls short. The long and the short of it is that £11 a week has been very important.

They have also done a few other things, which will be very interesting. There is a carer additional person payment, which is £510 per year, because at the moment it is basically only one person. If you are caring for two people and that takes you up to the 35 hours a week, that does not work with carer’s allowance as it is only associated with one person, but in Scotland you can now get the additional £510 if you are caring for more than one person. They have also removed what we call the 21-hour rule, which in England means that you have to choose between carer’s allowance and full-time study with things like T-levels. We think it is very important that we do that in England as well. There are a few other things. You can have carer’s allowance post somebody dying; it runs on now for longer in Scotland. They have changed a few things, but it will probably take a bit longer to see what the impact of that is.

Just on that, are the demographics of carers in Scotland different from the rest of the United Kingdom, which would justify some of those additional measures?

About 95,000 people received the care allowance supplement in December 2025, so that is quite a good pool of people to get some evidence on that. The answer though is no, it is not sufficiently different to say that this would not be useful elsewhere. Emily, you would agree?

Yes, I would agree. Carers tend to be older in Wales, but that is the only significant difference we see between different nations.

This is a question for Anne in particular. Is there anything we can learn about the differential health outcomes for unpaid carers across Europe and how it is affected by state support? For instance, Norway and Germany do very well, but what observations do you have?

Before I get into the European differences, I will just say a little bit about what we find in the UK on care and health, because we are very lucky in the UK to have very robust longitudinal survey data. We have been able to look at trajectories of physical and mental health before people become carers, during the transition into beginning to provide care, and then in the years after. We are able to compare that with matched controls who do not take up care and we see an immediate spike in psychological distress symptoms during the transition into becoming a carer. We see that that persists for several years after making the transition. We see that that is concentrated among people particularly under the age of 65, but affects everyone if they are providing more intense care. By that, we mean 20 hours a week or more, or living with the person that they are caring for. If we then look across Europe, what we have been able to do in our project is create a measure of care regimes based on five indicators of how much state support is being invested into the care system. What we find is three key findings. First, carers in countries with high levels of support tend to care for fewer hours, and this is a very consistent finding across the literature. For example, we find that for carers aged 50-plus, a third are caring intensively in countries with low state support, compared with 10% in countries with high state support. We also find that more people are providing care, so it seems that if you are in a country where you are getting enough support to care for fewer hours and you can then combine that potentially with employment and other activities, people are more willing to provide care. The second finding is that the gender inequity that we see particularly in the hours of care that people are doing, which is a very consistent and strong finding, is much smaller in countries that have high state support for care. Female carers are 64% more likely than male carers to care intensively in low support countries and 34% more likely in high support countries. The third finding is that the midlife deterioration of mental health that I talked about with care is much smaller in countries with high levels of support. For example, in Norway, which was one of our partners in the Eurocare project, we see that when people become carers in midlife there is no impact on their wellbeing. Altogether we can say that state support for a carer allows people to participate more fully in care but at levels that are compatible with maintaining employment, good mental health and reducing gender inequity.

Thank you. They are very big differences; it is very interesting. Do you think there are any changes to carer’s benefits that we could make that would help prevent worsening health outcomes?

One consistent finding in all of our work is that 20 hours or more per week seems to be a real threshold for impacts on people’s mental health in particular. I guess one thing that might suggest for carer’s allowance is that we could look at a threshold more like 20 hours per week rather than the 35 hours, which is the current threshold. Beyond carer’s allowance, what really seems to help is having universal, systematic access to high-quality respite care, ideally through a kind of national care service that is looking at the whole picture. We need a system in which carers have support to be able to get out and participate in employment. We are concerned about economic inactivity in this country. In countries where people have care available to them so that they can go and participate in employment, they are more likely to do so. Similarly, we don’t see that impact on mental health when people have those alternative care services available to them.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, everybody. Good to see you. Many carers themselves are disabled or have long-term health conditions. How could and should the DWP tailor carer’s benefits and the support it provides to that group?

A very good question, and particularly when we have been looking at disability benefits and the changes to PIP. We have about 150,000 people who are disabled and get disability benefits and also get carer’s allowance. It is absolutely possible to be both and do both. Carers gave us very good examples of that: people with physical disabilities looking after a son/daughter with a learning disability, visual impairments, and similar situations looking after partners. There is a whole range of ways that we need to consider this. First, in the Timms review there is a pledge to make sure that carers are involved, because disability benefits are a gateway benefit for carer’s allowance. You have to be getting a disability benefit, so it is critically important to us and the future of how carers are able to claim. The second thing is that when we moved to Universal Credit, it was possible to get two separate premia, a carer premium and a disability premium. It is not possible now; you can only get one or the other. I do not know how many people have lost out as a result of that, but one thing we have asked for—there is a brilliant piece of work by the Institute of Employment Studies looking at return to work support—is that the DWP do not always know, for example, who is caring as well as having a disability. It doesn’t always collect that data and it is not always related to whether you get carer’s allowance or not. You might not qualify for carer’s allowance; you might doing only 10 or 20 hours a week. The DWP having a much better idea of and recording of who has caring responsibilities would then help to tailor the kinds of support it needs. With Sir Charlie Mayfield’s review, again we have this health and care overlap that is very important to look at. There is a number of measures again with employers understanding the overlap between people who have health issues while working, some of which come from caring, some of which are made worse by caring and some of which are completely independent to caring, but that overlap is just another layer that people have to deal with. We recommend Sir Charlie Mayfield and the Keep Britain Working review also had a specific lens on carers, and particularly how employers and occupational health supports carers.

I completely agree. The only thing I want to add is that we picked up whispers—rumours—that maybe there was a view in some parts of the DWP that if you are in receipt of PIP, you really couldn’t be that disabled if you were caring for 35-plus hours a week. It would be very good if you, as a Committee, could just keep an eye on that.

How significant an impact will the Government’s decision to link the earnings limit on carer’s allowance to 16 hours at the national living wage have on carers’ ability to combine caring and employment? I don’t know who wants to go first.

I am very happy to go first. First of all, if you talk to carers, a large proportion don’t know what the earnings limit is, because it changes every year. It was a very significant decision to raise it to the same level as the national living wage. Every year it has cuts and every year carers, prior to this decision, have had to reduce the amount of work that they were doing by 20 minutes, by 30 minutes. As we have said, people could not take extra shifts, they could not take pay rises, so it is very significant. I am just going to look for my statistics now. We asked carers about what difference it had made and around one third said it would allow them to take more work, bearing in mind that some people did not know about it. However, the real challenge with the earnings limit is the lack of a taper. People are terrified of going over that limit, so a lot of people try to stay below it. When you talk to carers who have work, asking them, “Is this a choice?” you hear it is partially a choice, but it is also financially critically important for people. I want to thank the Government for making that, and bring on the taper as soon as possible. It was estimated that about 60,000 more carers would benefit. This will be enhanced if we can get that taper right and quickly.

Are there any other mechanisms you think the Department could use to help carers who wish to be in work, other than the taper?

Yes. At the moment there is not a work allowance for carers, for example, within Universal Credit. There are other work allowances that people can get if you have a disabled partner or children but, for example, there is no longer a work allowance for a mum whose son or daughter becomes an adult. We all accept that with those other groups, people’s ability to work is curtailed because of other types of caring. This is something that we would like to see. The Department for Work and Pensions says the vast majority of carers are covered by other types of work allowances, but if we are looking at a level playing field for carers, we could introduce a work allowance for people. It would also support people caring for parents, for example. It is just that, allowing people to link with the labour market could make a difference, so we would advocate for that.

But we need good systems to underpin all these things. It is just ridiculous at the moment. Making sure this is integrated at a system level is absolutely essential, otherwise we will get even more of a mess.

Going back to the point that was made by several of us about the decisions around work and care at that initial point of starting to care, extended periods or a period of paid leave at that starting point of caring in people’s lives would give them the opportunity to find out further information, find out what care services are available and to consider the options at that point. People are making decisions about care in times of crisis, in really high stress situations, as Anne said, so having a period where they have that financial security to put trusted and appropriate and affordable care into place, if they can do, that would help people to stay in the workplace.

I want to add on carer’s leave, in the countries where we see carers combining care within employment more, they do have much more generous carer’s leave. The assumption is that most carers are employed and working. I think Norway has three weeks at pay replacement, so full income earnings replacement. It might just provide that space for people to get things set up, for example, and not have to exit the labour market.

The Government are reviewing carer’s leave at the moment, so it would be an opportunity to look at paid carer’s leave. They have pledged to do that, which we estimated would cost between £5 million and £32 million a year, based on carers’ actual take-up rates, working with employers and looking at what they do.

There are lots of different benefits out there. They do different jobs, they have different rules and they interact in quite complicated ways. Do you have any suggestions on how we might improve that or make it easier for the consumer? I don’t know who wants to come in.

I think Liz mentioned it before, certainly Universal Credit and having a journal or something like that for carers, where they have much easier interaction. As Kirsty mentioned, with some of the processes, it would also really help staff if we could automate some of this, if we were able to gather the information more easily. One of the challenges we have at the moment is with systems not talking to each other. When the Department for Work and Pensions says, “Tell us about your changes,” we have examples of carers telling Universal Credit colleagues about changes in circumstances, but they also need to tell the carer’s allowance unit. It is this knit-up of different systems that is absolutely critical and will ultimately lead to a better service for people. It is very frustrating to work with difficult processes. I think staff are doing a very good job, often without the right systems and processes in place, so we would recommend that. Communications are critically important—transparent, open, what is on the website and how you are communicating to people. We are talking about a very busy, hard-pressed population, as you know, who have very little time, so it has to be clear.

Carers’ organisations have also raised concerns about the potential impact of PIP reforms on people in receipt of carer’s benefits, that one carer’s allowance depends on a PIP award. What solutions do you think DWP could use to address that problem? Who would like to take that?

With the previous proposals, the changes in the points system would have meant quite a significant impact on the carer’s ability to claim carer’s allowance. It is just a couple of lines but would have affected about 150,000 carers, which was very significant. We found carers providing very important levels of care to people who would have lost out with that points system. With the Timms review, I think that understanding how these things are measured within the Department is critically important. The review has said that it will consult with carers and carers’ organisations, including both of our organisations, and we would strongly recommend it takes evidence as well from carers to really get a feel for how that has impacted. A few of the people who have been appointed to the committee have caring responsibilities as well, so there is an element of knowledge there, but we need to recognise the importance of that review and how that affects carers’ abilities to claim their own income. They were distraught with the last process. It was very painful, with the legislation going through, so we are pleased that the review has been set up and will consider these things.

A very important point.

On navigating the benefits system more broadly, our participants have talked about the difficulties in accessing financial support. They talked about, as has been mentioned here, the complex interactions between benefits. That was often a barrier to claiming support. For example, one carer had a household income of around £20,000 and she was put off claiming carer’s allowance because she knew that it would impact her mum, who she cared for, with the severe disability premium. That sort of interaction between benefits can often act as a barrier with the complexity there. Following on from that, I am currently working on another project within the Centre for Care which looks at complexities in the benefits system. In that project we have spoken to welfare rights advisers on how they help people navigate through, which is an essential service for some claimants because of the complexity of the system. We found that that complexity is undermining the core aims of carer’s allowance as well. We are presenting those findings at a DWP seminar next week, if anybody wants to listen in.

Very topical. Thank you.

Thank you for coming to speak to us. The question that I have is on young adult carers, but I think we just need to recognise there are lots of under-16s who are caring too. One of the things that is quite interesting is how young adult carers get picked up through that journey and identified as maybe requiring additional financial support. First to Anne, how does the experience of young adult carers in the UK compare to that of young carers in other countries and how is that impacted by the support provided by Government?

In the UK we find that young adult carers are 38% less likely to get a university degree compared with non-carers. If they are caring intensively for 35 hours a week or more, that goes up to 86% less likely to get a university degree. They are also 50% less likely to enter employment. We know we currently have concerns about inactivity among young adults, so care really plays a role there. We also find that for those who do get a university degree the impact on employment is not there, so it is very helpful if we can get them into some kind of further or higher education. On the international comparisons, the other country where we have longitudinal data as good as in the UK is Germany. We have replicated our analysis there and found pretty much identical results. In different kinds of survey data across Europe, we consistently see that young adult carers are less likely to be in employment, education or training across the board than non-carers. It is not like the kind of wider care picture, where we can look to good models in Europe and say this might be something we would like to emulate. With young adult carers and carers, I think that the UK is at the forefront of starting to recognise the issue here. There is still a lot to be done. We mentioned the 21-hour rule. That is an obvious answer. That is a real barrier to young people taking up full-time university education or any higher education. They have done away with it in Scotland and I think that is really something to be considered. The other thing is young people who are caring for very long hours. The census showed recently that of young adult carers, 14% are caring for 50 hours a week or more; 14% does not sound like a lot, but no young people should be caring for 50 hours per week. We need other systems in place that ensure that that does not happen. Early identification is key. You mentioned that a lot of young people don’t think of themselves as carers. We need young carer policies and leads in education, colleges and universities. We need to ensure that staff in education have awareness training and are aware of what the warning signs might be, persistent absenteeism, things like that, which young carers talk about as being things that have helped them be identified in the system. Also when people are diagnosed with chronic conditions, a systematic assessment of, “Is there a young person involved in this situation and can they be referred to services within that health setting?”

Thank you, that is very useful. Kirsty, you want to come in.

We run the Young Carers Alliance in the UK and the Young Carers Services Alliance in Scotland. The Education Select Committee has taken a real interest in identification, which is very good. One thing I will flag is that we have started a conversation with Baroness Smith, the relevant cross-departmental Minister, about pathways for young adult carers. There are about two in every classroom, but they fall off the system at FE and apprenticeships don’t work for them. We need more flexibility for them to have pathways from education into the workforce, concentrated in more economically deprived areas as well. There is a geographical element to this, which is very important, but they are hidden within the stats. Young adult carers by and large are hugely responsible individuals. They are taking on huge responsibility within the households: they are running the finances, dishing out medicine, looking after younger siblings, talking to the hospital and so on. They have a different set of barriers to other young people not in education, employment or training. The system does not recognise that, whether that is apprenticeships or employment support, and the financial stuff, they are making a choice between full-time education and carer’s allowance. That is bonkers at that age.

I think there is the relationship between young carers and not being in education, training or employment and the 21-hour rule. It all conspires for the young person not to continue in education. I think also what Kirsty identifies is that quite often the caring for a young person is generational. They may be looking after a parent who is unwell and making sure that their younger siblings get to school, so that caring responsibility is double sets of care for their loved ones. It may be those things that they take up rather than something that they actively decide to do. There are lots of challenges behind that. What intervention do you think could help young adult carers into employment, education and training? Kirsty started off. I don’t know if anybody else on the panel wanted to contribute.

Identification to begin with. To be in the schools is very important. We run a big programme with the Children’s Society. The national lottery has just given us £5 million to roll that out across England and then work in Scotland and Wales as well. Still I think 62% of schools are saying they have no young carers on the roll, but then the data falls apart when you get to the FE level and so on. Thankfully we have the longitudinal study, so we can track more and look statistically at what is happening with that, so more data is very important. Then, as mentioned, it is the DWP’s employment support systems and the youth guarantee within that. The Government have wanted to put more emphasis on vocational pathways, and young adult carers by and large will stay close to home rather than wanting to go away to university. Interestingly, they also want to go into health and social care careers, because that is what they have seen. We need more people in health and social care, but isn’t it a shame that they do not have the wider world, more role models, “I was a young carer and look what I am doing now.” There is a whole host of different things we can do, but a big part of what we are doing is just making young adult carers famous, get them into the public sight, because they have been hidden for a long time.

Thank you. Does anybody else want to contribute?

On the data, we currently have a project looking at younger carers in schools, where we have been able to link with National Pupil Database outcomes. Even at the end of key stage 2, we start to see educational differences opening up, and certainly by the time they get to GCSE and A-levels there are very dramatic differences. Yes, early identification.

On the 21-hour rule, it looks like DWP and DFE have a bit of a Mexican standoff. It is a case of who takes control, who takes charge, and that just seems a bit stuck.

The hope that the skills have come into the responsibility of DWP may be a win opportunity for us to look at as a further point. Kirsty, you mentioned the carer support payment in Scotland. It seems to be less prohibitive in education-related criteria than carer’s allowance. Do we have any kind of understanding of what the impact has been on young adult carers, or does it feel too soon yet?

It is anecdotal. I do not have strong statistics. We run the Young Carers Services Alliance across Scotland and the frontline staff are saying that the young people have really welcomed this. It is changing the way they are thinking about their choices. There are a couple of things in Scotland. There is a young carer grant, which is for 16 to 19-year-olds. It is £405 per annum and they can use that for personal things like driving lessons or something like that. Then with the 21-hour rule, of course it is not just young adult carers who benefit, it is also older people who might want to retrain, so it is a wider investment in the skills and economic wellbeing of carers.

I just have a few stats of the carer support payment and full-time students. It is thought there are about 30,000 students at college or university in Scotland who provide unpaid care, and then the extension of the carer support payment is approximately 1,500. It is only 5% of that cohort, so it is potentially very transportable to England and Wales.

Thank you very much. That concludes this oral evidence session on carer’s benefits beyond the Sayce Review. I thank you for your excellent contributions.