Internal documents reveal that HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) accepted a “tolerable” risk of harm when it suspended child benefit payments without warning families as part of an anti-fraud drive. The tax authority deemed the chance of inflicting harm as “remote”, despite evidence from a pilot scheme showing travel data was wrong in 46% of cases.
The crackdown, which saw nearly 24,000 child benefit accounts suspended between July and October, relied on incomplete Home Office travel data. Parents received letters referencing overseas holidays—sometimes dating back three years—for which the Home Office had no record of a return journey. By November 30, almost 15,000 families had been confirmed as legitimate claimants, while only 1,019 (4.3%) were found to involve incorrect claims.
Documents released under freedom of information laws show HMRC recognised the risk of wrongly flagging families as having emigrated but deemed it tolerable. During the wider rollout, checks against PAYE records were removed to streamline the process, contributing to widespread errors. Officials believed the “severity of the harm” was minimal, despite families reporting considerable stress and missed payments while scrambling to prove they had not emigrated.
Among those affected was a woman whose benefit was stopped after travelling to France to collect her husband’s remains, and another who went to Dublin for his sister’s funeral. In one case, a parent was in intensive care with sepsis at the time she was alleged to have emigrated. The Home Office had a record of her flight booking to Italy but not whether she had flown.
Senior HMRC officials are due to be questioned by the Treasury select committee on Tuesday. The committee previously said the department appeared to have been “cavalier with people’s finances”. Mariano delli Santi of Open Rights Group criticised the data protection impact assessment, saying it was “obviously conducted poorly”.
