I’ve written a few of posts about this. [1][2][3] Essentially, the “carers’ scandal” is a mocked up “scandal’ created, it seems, in large part by Guardian journalists – presumably because a) it extends the subversive agenda of transferring as much public money to liberal-left client groups as possible, regardless of the implications for the state budget and b) it promotes their own careers. (The Guardian has even won some kind of award for this story. Strangely; it was not an award for fiction).
The facts are pretty simple, in the main. A very large number of people who have been receiving a particular social benefit called “Carers Allowance” over-claimed. The government department which administers the scheme, the DWP, was sluggish in asking people to pay back what they had unlawfully claimed; people who had claimed thousands they were not entitled to claim were now asked to pay it back, albeit months or even years after the over-claim. In some cases a small civil penalty was added for cheating. In a few egregious cases people have been taken to court. It is true that it is maladministration not to be sharper off the mark; the DWP should not have let this drag on for months or years. But, the core point is that when you claim a social security benefit it is your responsibility to check the rules and not claim more than you are entitled to. At least, it is in any normal world. But not for the Guardian journalists, for example, Patrick Butler and Josh Halliday [4].
As we have previously discussed, this fake story fits into the general victim narrative so beloved of liberals. They want to promote as many “victims” as possible. The victim narrative is how power undermines authority while covertly expanding its reach. “Victims” are docile in Foucault’s sense. So, for power, the more the merrier. This story takes its place in the wider discourse whereby liberals try to appear that they are “fighting for rights” when, in reality, they are hard at work in the service of power.
The current article is a bit strange. It is very badly explained, (another feature of modern journalism), but it appears to be focussing on some fall-out from the main non-scandal. For the first time, we see a report that some of the overpayments may indeed have been the fault of the DWP:
Furthermore, it is still unclear how ministers will compensate thousands more carers who were unlawfully issued with overpayment demands because of longstanding system faults linking universal credit and carer’s allowance, or who were wrongly told to repay money after officials lost evidence that they had reported changes in earnings.
Obviously, these are real injustices, though as far as we can tell these issues effect “thousands” not the “hundreds of thousands of carers” who are the subject of the main story.
Because this is 2026 and the government is as desperate as any other modern corporate-finance serving government to maintain the fiction that it “acts for the people” the government accepted the claims of the supposed “victims” and commissioned a “disability rights expert” to look into the matter. She, not surprisingly criticised the DWP. The Guardian reports this thus:
Her [the disabiliy rights expert] scathing report, published in November, found that system errors and management shortcomings at the DWP inflicted avoidable hardship and distress on hundreds of thousands of carers and led to hundreds of millions of pounds of public money being misspent.
This is a kind of delerium. The vast majority of the “overpayment” cases resulted from people claiming more money than they were entitled to. (The technical point is that the benefit was only payable if people earned less than a certain amount each week. If they earned more than the limit they were not entitled to the benefit. But people were earning more than the limit and still claiming the benefit). Basically these people were scamming the system. (This is a very well-known scam in certain circles; it used to be the norm amongst a certain section of society to note that when they claimed Housing Benefit, if they did not notify the local authority when they got a job they could continue receiving the benefit for months).
This is a symbol of the parlous state of the UK. Journalists win “awards” for mocking up victim stories, turning benefit cheats into the wronged, and forcing a populist government to mis-spend millions “putting this right”. It is a sign of a country which has lost its balls/backbone/guts.
Notes
- https://thenewobserver.co.uk/the-scandal-that-isnt-carers-allowance/
- https://thenewobserver.co.uk/the-purpose-of-the-victim-narrative-modern-radicalism-is-actually-a-call-for-diminished-individuals-with-an-example/
- https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/dec/06/senior-dwp-civil-servant-blames-victims-for-carers-allowance-scandal
- https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/apr/13/unpaid-carers-allowance-dwp-benefit-repayment-demands