A woman who booked a flight from London to Oslo but never checked in or travelled has had her child benefit stopped by the UK government. Tax authorities told her their records showed she had emigrated.
Lisa Morris-Almond is one of thousands of people who have had their child benefit frozen as part of a botched crackdown on benefit fraud.
She was due to travel to Norway in April 2024 for a wedding but her friend called it off just days before and Morris-Almond did not check in for her British Airways flight.
But three weeks ago she noticed her child benefit had not arrived as usual and rang the child benefit helpline where she was told to check with her bank, a routine request.
When she rang back to say there was no error at her bank, HMRC told her she had taken a flight to Norway and there was “no record of her return”.
“I said: ‘What are you talking about?’ I then explained that I was supposed to have gone to the wedding but I didn’t go in the end and he just said: ‘The records show you didn’t come back.’ He didn’t even hear what I said.”
She then questioned why HMRC did not have records of her paying tax in the UK as a PAYE worker in the last 18 months.
“They just said they would send me a new letter and I could respond to that,” Morris-Almond said.
“This is just so ludicrous. I’m angry for everybody who has to go through this ridiculous state of affairs just because it’s some sort of glitch in the government system that means they are unable to record who has left and who has returned to the country.
“Why is it that we have to sort out their mess?”
When contacted by the Guardian, HMRC said it could not comment on individual cases.
Morris-Almond is one of 23,500 people who have had their child benefit stopped by HMRC in the past few weeks as part of the government’s crackdown on benefit fraud.
But unlike many others, she did not encounter border control or travel to an airport, suggesting that the Home Office immigration operations could have had access to passenger records.
In response to earlier inquiries, the Home Office said operators of international passenger services were “required by law to provide information to the Home Office about each service and the people onboard for international journeys to and from the UK”.
They said the information was needed for immigration, customs and police purposes including border security and law enforcement.
The Liberal Democrats have called for urgent answers on the crackdown and have tabled questions in parliament to establish how it got the green light given the amount of problems that have arisen.
Another woman said she had been wrongly flagged as an emigrant after flying out of the country but returning on the Eurostar.
The Lib Dems, who are neck and neck with Labour in the latest opinion polls, want to know why HMRC chose Border Force data over PAYE records to assess eligibility for payments.
They have also asked if the government has taken steps to rectify incorrect Border Force data or carried out an impact assessment of the pilot scheme before beginning the crackdown.
HMRC has apologised twice for its errors and said on Tuesday it was stopping the practice of suspending child benefit payments first and asking questions later.
It said it had run checks on 1.5 million of the 6.9 million beneficiaries, adding that it had a “duty to tackle error and fraud” and that 589 of the 23,500 parents had had child benefit restored since the errors came to light.
It is urging people to call the number on their letters with PAYE checks and a new simplified set of answers needed on personal circumstances in place of the original 73 questions.
It also said it would be reinstating PAYE checks before it approached people who may not have left the country but were flagged as emigrants based on flawed data.
