DWP 'waives' people's £1,300 penalties and wipes slate clean
The Department for Work and Pensions has moved to WAIVE a £1,300 penalty over unpaid Carer's Allowance debts. The DWP has waived the financial punishment and reprimand for an unpaid carer threatened with fraud prosecution.
Clemency Jacques is one of 134,500 people repaying £251m in carer’s allowance overpayments, the Guardian reports. But Ms Jacques, who cares for her disabled son and elderly mother, has been granted a reprieve after she was warned with court or ARREST.
The 43-year-old branded a DWP letter “really grudging” and told the Guardian: “I can only assume the letter came on the back of the Guardian article and they were embarrassed. The sad thing is, before the article was published, I was just another number in a database.
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"What happens to people who don’t get an article written about them?” The DWP decided the threshold for applying an administrative penalty had not been met after all and reversed its earlier decision to chase and prosecute the mum, who lives in Brighton.
“I would not have had to go through any of this if the DWP had checked their emails,” she said in her interview with the nnational newspaper. “They are holding me to an administrative standard which they themselves are not keeping to.”
After being told of the breach, she said she offered to repay it straight away, describing it as “one dropped plate among the hundreds she was spinning” to stay afloat. “What they did was unethical. They left me in limbo for months, and then they said ‘we might take you to court unless you sign this bit of paper [the administrative penalty agreement] and pay us an extra £1,300,’” she said.
A DWP spokesperson said: “We have reviewed Dr Jacques’ case and removed the original administrative penalty applied to their overpayment. This government has a duty to carefully managing taxpayer money and recoup any losses to the public purse.”