---

Carers

My Select Committee colleague makes a good point. We had a wealth of evidence about financial pressures—I use the words ““wealth”” and ““financial pressures”” in the same sentence, but they would not be part of the same sentence for carers; indeed, carers told us that they struggled. One problem for the Committee and, indeed, the Government is that Ministers have not really made up their mind what carer's allowance is supposed to be. If they accepted our recommendation and linked carer's allowance to jobseeker's allowance—in the carer support allowance that we recommend—that would bring in various of the rules and restrictions that apply to jobseeker's allowance. The Government do not see carer's allowance as an income-replacement benefit, so there are all the rules about the number of hours that individuals need to care for someone and the amount that they can get from work. There is a contradiction there, because if someone is caring for 35 hours a week, there are few hours left for them to go out and work. We have to go back to first principles. What is carer's allowance for? Is it an income-replacement benefit for somebody who spends most of their time at home looking after one or more individuals? If so, it should be increased and our recommendation should be accepted. If our recommendation was accepted, it would have consequences for earning rules and all the other complexities attached to the existing carer's allowance. It would also affect the 21-hour rule for education, which the Committee mentioned. Do the Government want the imposition of that rule to disadvantage young carers in particular, who want to go into education and training and then into the workplace? The rule is there because of other elements in the benefits system. We need to be clear why we are paying carers the money, but we are not, so we are not moving ahead. Again, the Government could look at the issue separately from their overall review of the benefits system; it could be a discrete part of the DWP's examination of benefits simplification.