An HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) anti-fraud crackdown that stripped 23,000 families of their child benefit failed to “adequately consider” the policy’s impact on claimants, an official report has found. The National Audit Office (NAO) inquiry followed HMRC’s decision to suspend payments after flight records provided by the Home Office purportedly showed thousands of parents had emigrated.
The initial rollout of the scheme was suspended at the end of last year after reports showed thousands of those parents had simply gone on holiday, with the Home Office having no record of their return. Examples included a parent booked to attend a wedding in Norway that was cancelled, and a family recorded as emigrating to Italy who did not board the plane because a child had a seizure at the departure gate.
The NAO found that the first rollout did not adequately consider the impact on claimants, suspending payments for more eligible claimants than necessary and imposing onerous requirements to prove eligibility. HMRC had removed pay-as-you-earn (PAYE) checks from the first rollout because it lacked experienced staff and relied on inexperienced workers not qualified to check tax records, despite holding data that many claimants were working and paying tax in the UK.
Parents received letters demanding answers to 70 questions to prove they had not emigrated, causing stress and upset. One woman, Agnieszka, a Polish-British dual national, said her payments stopped after a week’s holiday in 2023 when she flew to Warsaw and returned via Edinburgh airport, leaving the Home Office with no record of her return. She described the experience as “very stressful and upsetting”.
HMRC told the NAO it had received 22,500 calls from customers between August 2025 and February 2026, reflecting the scale of the blunder. The report recommended that future schemes consider the human cost of using innovation to tackle fraud, while minimising impacts on eligible claimants. HMRC acknowledged weaknesses in oversight, including not appointing a single senior responsible owner, and said it had taken swift action to put things right, with cases opened between August and October 2025 protecting around £60m in taxpayers’ money.
