Government considering compensation for victims of carer’s allowance scandal
The government is considering compensation payouts for unpaid carers who have been unfairly hit with huge financial repayments in recent years after inadvertently falling foul of harsh carer’s allowance benefit rules.Ministers vowed to fix problems with the benefit after a Guardian investigation revealed how draconian penalties coupled with Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) administrative failures had plunged hundreds of thousands of carers into debt.More than 144,000 carers are now repaying £251m in benefit overpayments that typically amount to £5,000 but can be as high as £20,000.Some face life-changing bills after accidentally breaching earnings rules by a few pence a week.The Guardian’s reporting of the DWP’s often brutal treatment of carers who were accidentally caught out by carer’s allowance earnings rules caused public outrage and led to comparisons with the Post Office scandal.
The government is understood to want to move swiftly to overhaul what it sees as a legacy of more than a decade of Conservative neglect, during which problems with carer’s allowance overpayments were repeatedly ignored or covered up,At the heart of the scandal is the “cliff edge” penalty, which punishes carers in part-time jobs by forcing them to pay back the entire benefit if they breach earnings limits by even tiny amounts,A carer who earned 50p more than the current £196 weekly threshold for 52 weeks would pay back not £26 but £4,258,80,The problem was exacerbated by the DWP’s routine failure to check all monthly HMRC alerts flagging up potential earnings breaches, allowing carers to inadvertently accrue massive overpayments stretching back years.
Until recently it was DWP policy to check just half of the earnings alerts it received.Carers often did not realise they had breached rules because earnings thresholds did not automatically rise in line with the national minimum wage, or because holiday pay and one-off performance bonuses were counted as weekly earnings.Carer’s allowance reform – including whether to offer financial redress for carers hit by the scandal – will be high in the in-tray of the new welfare secretary, Pat McFadden, who replaced Liz Kendall.The benefit has come to symbolise some of the worst excesses of DWP bureaucratic cruelty.But the costs and complexity of such a move would present a formidable challenge.
It would also raise questions over the hundreds of carers who acquired a criminal record after being convicted of fraud after being referred to the courts by the DWP.Redress for carers who ran up debts as a result of DWP shortcomings would represent a big change in official attitudes.The previous government generally refused to accept any responsibility for carer’s allowance injustices, insisting that overpayments were legally the fault of carers themselves.Ministers are mulling over an independent government-commissioned report into how the overpayment scandal occurred and how to prevent future problems.Drawn up by the disability policy expert Liz Sayce, it was handed over to ministers at the end of July.
Sign up to First EditionOur morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersafter newsletter promotionThe Sayce report is expected to be published in the next few months alongside a plan to overhaul the benefit.Ministers have already taken steps to reduce overpayments by hiring more staff to check earnings alerts, trialling a text system to warn carers of earnings breaches, and raising the carer’s allowance weekly earnings threshold.More than 5 million people in the UK provide unpaid care to frail, ill or disabled loved ones.About 1.4 million, who spend over 35 hours a week caring, claim the £83.
30 weekly carer’s allowance.Just under half of unpaid carers, most of whom are women, live in poverty.The Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, a longtime campaigner on carer issues, said: “I really hope the government will give the victims of this appalling scandal the compensation they deserve.It would be a milestone for carers across the country, and a victory for all those who have campaigned tirelessly for justice.“The government has a chance here not just to compensate the victims, but to overhaul carer’s allowance so it properly supports carers and doesn’t punish them for working.
We will keep pushing ministers to seize that chance.”Helen Walker, the chief executive of Carers UK, said: “Far too many carers are currently repaying debts that the government should have told them about much earlier, or they should not have had in the first place.It’s been devastating for carers, many of whom have been badly hit financially and it’s taken an enormous toll on their mental health.”A DWP spokesperson said: “We don’t comment on speculation.“We understand the huge difference carers make, as well as the struggles they may face.
That’s why we have raised the carer’s allowance earnings threshold, benefiting more than 60,000 carers by 2029-30 – the biggest ever cash increase in the earnings threshold for carer’s allowance.“We commissioned an independent review of carer’s allowance earnings-related overpayments to see what happened and what changes can be made, which we are now considering and will publish in due course.”
ChatGPT may start alerting authorities about youngsters considering suicide, says CEO
The company behind ChatGPT could start calling the authorities when young users talk seriously about suicide, its co-founder has said.Sam Altman raised fears that as many as 1,500 people a week could be discussing taking their own lives with the chatbot before doing so.The chief executive of San Francisco-based OpenAI, which operates the chatbot with an estimated 700 million global users, said the decision to train the system so the authorities were alerted in such emergencies was not yet final. But he said it was “very reasonable for us to say in cases of, young people talking about suicide, seriously, where we cannot get in touch with the parents, we do call authorities”.Altman highlighted the possible change in an interview with the podcaster Tucker Carlson on Wednesday, which came after OpenAI and Altman were sued by the family of Adam Raine, a 16-year-old from California who killed himself after what his family’s lawyer called “months of encouragement from ChatGPT”
Larry Ellison briefly overtakes Elon Musk as world’s richest person
US tech billionaire Larry Ellison is neck-and-neck with Elon Musk in the contest to be the world’s richest person after briefly overtaking the Tesla chief executive on WednesdayEllison’s wealth surged after Oracle, the business software company in which he owns a stake of 41%, reported better than expected financial results.Oracle shares rose by more than 40% in early trading, at one point valuing the business software company at approximately $960bn (£707bn) and Ellison’s stake at $393bn, just ahead of Musk’s fortune of $384bn, according to Bloomberg’s billionaires index. However, Ellison’s lead was short-lived as the stock closed at $328, a rise of 36% valuing Ellison’s shareholding at $378bn and putting Musk back ahead.The pair sit comfortably ahead of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos.Ellison, 81, also has other sources of wealth, including a stake in electric carmaker Tesla, where Musk is chief executive, a sailing team, the Indian Wells Open tennis tournament, and an island in Hawaii, according to Bloomberg
Snapchat allows drug dealers to operate openly on platform, finds Danish study
Snapchat has been accused by a Danish research organisation of leaving an “overwhelming number” of drug dealers to openly operate on Snapchat, making it easy for children to buy substances including cocaine, opioids and MDMA.The social media platform has said it proactively uses technology to filter out profiles selling drugs. However, research by Digitalt Ansvar (Digital Accountability), a Danish research organisation that promotes responsible digital development, has found evidence of a failure to moderate drug-related language in usernames. It also accused Snapchat of failing to respond adequately to reports of profiles openly selling drugs.Researchers used profiles of 13-year-olds and found a multitude of people selling drugs on Snapchat under usernames featuring keywords such as “coke”, “weed” and “molly”
Skip Apple’s new iPhone – five tips to make your old phone feel new again
On Tuesday, Apple announced the iPhone 17 series with the usual spate of new features, including a thinner design, improved displays and a camera with 4x optical zoom. If you’ve been getting frustrated with your old phone, or just tired of it, the lithe new model may look exactly like the device you need to launch your budding photographic career, reconnect with long-lost friends and maybe even save your life in an emergency.The Guardian’s journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more
How to Save the Internet by Nick Clegg review – spinning Silicon Valley
Nick Clegg chooses difficult jobs. He was the UK’s deputy prime minister from 2010 to 2015, a position from which he was surely pulled in multiple directions as he attempted to bridge the divide between David Cameron’s Conservatives and his own Liberal Democrats. A few years later he chose another challenging role, serving as Meta’s vice-president and then president of global affairs from 2018 until January 2025, where he was responsible for bridging the very different worlds of Silicon Valley and Washington DC (as well as other governments). How to Save the Internet is Clegg’s report on how he handled that Herculean task, along with his ideas for how to make the relationships between tech companies and regulators more cooperative and effective in the future.The main threat that Clegg addresses in the book is not one caused by the internet; it is the threat to the internet from those who would regulate it
Apple debuts thinner, $999 iPhone Air at ‘awe-dropping’ annual product event
Apple debuted its latest iPhone on Tuesday, trumpeting the smartphone’s slimmest design yet. The device, named the iPhone Air, is one of several upgrades the company unveiled at its annual product showcase, promoted with the title “awe-dropping”. The event kicked off at 10am PT with the company’s CEO, Tim Cook, speaking in front of its Cupertino headquarters.“Design is at the core of everything we do,” Cook said. The CEO touted the company’s thin iPhone, which sports a width of 5
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