For anyone who cares about carers and Carer's Allowance and keeping uptodate across all the very latest (including the below) following Patrick Butler and Josh Halliday is a must...

I welcome the NAO Carers Allowance examination -The key ask being why 5 years after its 1st investigation ⁦is DWPgovuk⁩ continuing to fail to use its data and intervene to prevent vulnerable Carers receiving overpayments and build up significant debts
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Carer's allowance latest: Spending watchdog to investigate growing DWP scandal over carer benefits that has plunged tens of thousands of vulnerable unpaid carers into debt theguardian.com/society/articl… by me and Josh Halliday

For too long, the DWP has prioritised strictly policing the benefits system over upholding a meaningful duty of care toward ill & disabled people. The consequences are often harmful & sometimes tragic. This is an important & welcome inquiry from the EHRC theguardian.com/society/articl…

Actions not words. This week, Sunak promised to prevent future scandals over public sector mistreatment of those it should serve but, close to home, another scandal is now being formally investigated, escalated because DWP have failed to co-operate fully with the EHRC.

My The Guardian story: UK human rights watchdog begins investigation into DWP’s treatment of ill and disabled people on benefits theguardian.com/society/articl…

This is a total scandal. Huge credit to Patrick Butler & colleagues The Guardian for exposing this. A state system that should be a lifeline instead causing families extreme stress & financial hardship by clawing back £ that carers were unknowingly overpaid.

We’re beginning to see the true scale of a scandal ruining lives of exhausted carers, a scandal that’s as much about stupidity as money

Stupid policy (with the ‘cliff edge’ benefit design) & stupid implementation (not keeping in timely contact with recipients)

The cost of carers allowance failures: ministers clawing back more than £250m from unpaid carers, latest official figures show theguardian.com/society/articl… via Josh Halliday and me

'A horrible echo of the Post Office scandal': TV presenter hits out at the government's poor treatment of unpaid carers in an emotional intervention theguardian.com/media/article/… va Josh Halliday

This is a really striking bit of reportage from Tom Clark exploring Norway's relatively low levels of inequality, its more generous (by UK standards) approach to social security, and the culture embedded in its equivalent of DWP.

“It’s ticking boxes as opposed to really empathising or communicating with people as individuals': my The Guardian analysis of the DWP study, long suppressed by ministers, which reveals what unpaid carers told them about problems with carer's allowance theguardian.com/society/articl…

Hardship, stress, anger: internal DWP study that ministers blocked for years highlights the distress caused to unpaid carers hit by carer's allowance overpayments theguardian.com/society/articl… via me and Josh Halliday

Carer's scandal latest: Fix carer's allowance problems without delay, MPs tell ministers, as long-suppressed DWP report reveals carers' fury at being treated as cheats and fraudsters by officials. By @joshhalliday and me.
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As a former member of the ⁦⁦Prime Minister’s Champion Group for Dementia Communities thankyou ⁦Mims Davies MP⁩ for your intervention & ⁦Guardian news⁩ ⁦Good Morning Britain⁩ ⁦Victoria Derbyshire⁩ ⁦BBC Radio 4 PM⁩ for your support.
#LetsFixCarersAllowance theguardian.com/society/articl…

Victories like these don’t happen every day.

Ministers apologise and return £7,000 in benefits to woman, 93, with dementia after scandal exposed by The Guardian

Story with ⁦Patrick Butler⁩: theguardian.com/society/articl…

My The Guardian story (w/Josh Halliday): Carer's allowance latest: Ministers have formally apologised and repaid £7,000 to a 93-year-old woman with dementia who they blamed for running up benefits overpayments theguardian.com/society/articl…

Powerful exposition of the carer's allowance scandal by Victoria Derbyshire, with a host of carers, and politicians, on BBC Newsnight last night bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00…

It's publication day for the pamphlet I've been working on with Gordon Brown

Nice write-up of the rescue plan for 'austerity's children' from Patrick Butler here. I'll post the full doc and my own take on Prospect when they're live later
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