More than 60% of parents who had their child benefit suspended by HMRC using incorrect Home Office travel data were not fraudulently claiming the benefit from abroad, the government has admitted. The scale of the anti-fraud fiasco is four times higher than previously acknowledged, with 15,000 of the 23,500 parents targeted now identified as legitimate beneficiaries living in the UK.
The admission came in a written answer to a parliamentary question tabled by Conservative MP Andrew Snowden. Exchequer Secretary Dan Tomlinson confirmed that, as of 30 November, 14,994 of the 23,794 cases where benefit had been suspended had since been confirmed as eligible. This is four times the number previously admitted by HMRC, which had repeatedly refused to provide a running commentary on the issue.
Snowden described the figures as deeply troubling, noting that nearly two-thirds of families caught up in the exercise were fully eligible, with only 4.3% found to be claiming incorrectly. He highlighted the distress caused to families who rely on the benefit, saying, 'The important thing here is that these families, who have every right to the benefit, have had it removed from them through no fault of their own.'
The controversy was first exposed by an investigation by the Detail in Belfast and the Guardian, which revealed that HMRC used Home Office data based on unconfirmed passenger bookings and incomplete border records. Cases included a woman whose benefit was stopped after a trip to Norway she never made, and another who missed a flight due to being in intensive care with sepsis. In a new case, Tina Pearson, a childminder in East Yorkshire, had her benefit frozen despite not having left the country in three years and not possessing a passport.
HMRC has since apologised for the errors and corrected the mistakes. The number of wrongly targeted parents is expected to rise, as 7,781 cases remain open, while only 1,019 have been found to involve ineligible claimants.
