Care Full analysis finds unpaid carers at risk of losing between £1.2bn – £1.7bn in income as a direct result of government changes to PIP eligibility announced this week.

Carers are set to be hit hard by the government announcements to cut PIP this week with an estimated 150,000 themselves in receipt of the benefit and up to a further 188,000 at risk of losing their Carers Allowance entitlement as the person they provide care for loses their PIP award.

The cuts leave households with a PIP recipient and a carer at risk of losing up to £10,000 a year and those where the carer also receives PIP themselves at risk of losing up to £16,800 a year.

In total, up to £1.746bn looks to be taken from unpaid carers with almost half of this figure seemingly unaccounted for in government calculations (with reference to unpaid care an area noted for additional exploration in this weeks green paper).

Carers entitled to Carers Allowance have to provide care for at least 35 hours a week to receive the benefit. This means that work is rarely a feasible alternative. For carers looking to recoup these huge income losses they will have to take on work beyond full time caring responsibilities, risking their own health and wellbeing in order to make ends meet. 

The scale of the repercussions of the cuts proposed by the government this week highlight the complexity of the system and the short-sightedness of repositioning our social security safety net around work. With the Carers Allowance review also open, it’s an opportunity to reflect on a whole system approach to ensuring disabled people and those who care live well. 

At Care Full we are – alongside many others – calling for a reversal of the proposed cuts and a move from the government to take a progressive approach to finding funds from taxes on those who can afford it, not taking the incomes of those who can’t.

	Best case scenario			Worst case scenario
	Income lost per person	Number affected	Total loss	Income lost per person	Number affected	Total loss
Loss of income from PIP amongst carers	£42001	150,0002	£630m	£63003	150000	£945m
Loss of income from Carers Allowances connected to PIP	£42594	125,0005	£535m	£4259	188,0006	£801m
Total			£1.164bn			£1.746bn

1 Based on lowest PIP claim value reported to be affected

2 Based on Carers UK reporting of number of carers in receipt of both PIP and Carers Allowance. This is likely to be an underestimate of the number of carers receiving PIP as many will not qualify for carers allowance for some reason but will still provide care to someone.

3 Based on highest PIP claim value reported to be affected

4 Based on annual payment award for Carers Allowance

5 Based on an estimate scaling whole claimant population proportions for Carers Allowance qualifying benefits (from DWP Stat-Xplore) to the Carers Allowance population (also DWP Stat-Xplore) and scaling to Resolution Foundation estimates of the proportion of PIP recipients to be affected by cuts: (total number of carers in receipt of carers allowance) * (proportion of all qualifying benefit recipients claiming PIP) * (lower estimate of proportion of PIP claims affected by cuts) = (1029545) * (53%) * (800000/3480031). This estimate assumes that Carer’s Allowance is claimed proportionately across qualifying benefits in the absence of detailed data. It also assumes that PIP claims affected by these policy changes also affect Carers Allowance proportionately in the absence of detailed data.

6 As 5 but with Resolution Foundation upper estimate of proportion of PIP recipients affected = (1029545) * (53%) * (1200000/3480031)