Some local authorities are trying to count that in the number of hours per week that they allow and have to fund to meet the Government target.
There are lots of anomalies in the carers allowance. What we should do with the devolved carers allowance has not been resolved. Our understanding from discussions that we have had with the DWP is that, although there are currently three provisos—that you have to be over 16, caring for 35 hours a week and not in gainful employment or full-time education—those are currently up for negotiation, in the sense that Scotland could redefine the criteria.
Some of the existing requirements have been taken out, such as the two-year residency test, which would stop somebody coming back from Australia to look after their elderly mother. The way in which the bill is written could well be misinterpreted, but if the carers allowance is effectively going to be scrapped in Scotland and the Scottish Government effectively given the opportunity to decide what to do here, you could start again.
All the options that would then be on the table would obviously come with potential cost implications, depending on how those issues were addressed. For example, you would need to negotiate increasing the threshold for working carers, increasing the amount of the carers allowance, or broadening or shortening the hours for which somebody needs to provide care in order to be eligible for carers allowance.
The principle of involving carers in how we reach the best solution will have to be dealt with. Depending on which group of carers you ask, you will get a different answer. For example, the day that you become a state pensioner, you lose your carers allowance, although nothing will have changed in your caring world. Similarly, the week that you earn more than £110, you will lose your benefits—although there are things that you can do to change some of that.
We have not nailed down exactly what the new benefit should look like, but we should bear in mind the principle that we want to establish the system as a human rights-based system that helps the people who are most in need. There are some really odd anomalies at the moment. If you are a retired chief constable on a state-funded pension of £80,000 a year, you are still eligible for carers allowance, because that pension does not count, but if you earn £125 a week doing 16 hours in a branch of Starbucks, you lose the allowance.