\n<\/p>\n
More than 60% of parents who had their child benefit stopped by HMRC using incorrect Home Office travel data were not fraudulently claiming the support from abroad, it has emerged.<\/p>\n
The scale of the government\u2019s anti-fraud fiasco is four times higher than previously admitted, with 15,000 of the 23,500 parents targeted by HMRC now identified as legitimate beneficiaries living in the UK.<\/p>\n
It means 63% of parents targeted in the anti-fraud debacle first reported by the Detail and the Guardian were legitimate claimants.<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s admission was revealed in a written answer to a parliamentary question tabled by the Conservative MP for Fylde, Andrew Snowden.<\/p>\n
Dan Tomlinson, the exchequer secretary to the Treasury, told Snowden in his written answer that figures revealed that, as of 30 November, 14,994 of the 23,794 cases where benefit had been suspended had since \u201cbeen confirmed to be eligible to child benefit\u201d.<\/p>\n
This is four times the number previously admitted by HMRC, which has repeatedly said it would not be entering a \u201crunning commentary\u201d on the debacle.<\/p>\n
Snowden said: \u201cThese figures are deeply troubling. HMRC has confirmed that nearly two-thirds of the families caught up in this exercise were fully eligible for child benefit, meaning only 4.3% were found to be claiming incorrectly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up in a family that for a period of time, through no fault of our own, relied on the benefits system. So I know first-hand how distressing it will have been for those who will rely on that money to put food on the table.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A letter in November from HMRC\u2019s chief executive and first permanent secretary to Meg Hillier, the chair of the Treasury select committee, disclosed data only up to 31 October, a few days after the Detail and the Guardian exposed the incidents of wrongful suspension.<\/p>\n
In that four-page letter, John-Paul Marks told her \u201c3,673 out of 23,794 customers\u201d had \u201ctheir eligibility subsequently confirmed\u201d.<\/p>\n
The new number of cases revealed by Tomlinson is likely to rise after he also disclosed that 7,781 remained open and so far 1,019 of the total cases opened were found to involve parents who were ineligible for child benefit.<\/p>\n
The move by HMRC caused uproar across the opposition benches when it was exposed by an investigation by the Detail in Belfast, which reported how parents who had gone on holidays from the UK but returned via Dublin airport suddenly found their child benefit had been stopped.<\/p>\n
A joint investigation by the Detail and the Guardian found the problem occurred beyond Northern Ireland, with hundreds of parents elsewhere in Britain also hit after it emerged the basis for the benefit suspension was Home Office data based on unconfirmed passenger bookings and incomplete exit and entry border data.<\/p>\n
One woman told how she had had her benefit stopped after she apparently had not returned from a trip to Norway \u2013 a journey she never made, as the wedding she was due to attend was cancelled.<\/p>\n
Another woman told how her benefit was stopped after she failed to make a flight as she had become seriously ill and was in intensive care with sepsis at the time of the alleged emigration.<\/p>\n
A third was told her benefit had been stopped after one of her children had an epileptic seizure at the departure gate and they could not continue with their holiday.<\/p>\n
In a new case uncovered by the Detail, one parent in England revealed she had not even booked a flight out of the country but was still hit by the benefit freeze.<\/p>\n
Tina Pearson, a childminder in East Yorkshire, suspected a scam when she received a letter notifying her that her child benefit was being stopped while HMRC investigated information it had that she had flown to Spain last year but not returned.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t left the country in three years, I don\u2019t have a passport. I\u2019ve never been to Spain,\u201d she said. \u201cSo it just seemed like a really weird letter to get.<\/p>\n
\u201cI ignored it, I thought, \u2018Oh that\u2019s a scam.\u2019 And then my child benefit didn\u2019t go in.\u201d She phoned HMRC and the mistake was immediately corrected.<\/p>\n
HMRC had based its decision on incomplete Home Office records and apologised within days of the error being exposed.<\/p>\n
It started a national introduction of the anti-fraud system in the late summer after a pilot scheme last autumn.<\/p>\n
However, HMRC said it would continue to crack down on fraudsters and would conduct PAYE checks before suspending future accounts.<\/p>\n
Parents have told the Guardian that PAYE checks would not cover those who were self-employed or were on carer\u2019s allowance or other benefits.<\/p>\n
Experts at the Open Rights Group (ORG) have serious data protection concerns about the HMRC data processing and decisions to remove PAYE checks from the national rollout, even though they had been conducted in the pilot.<\/p>\n
They also want to know if \u201crisks were identified but ignored\u201d, pointing out \u201cin law the onus is on the data processor, but that onus has been shifted on to the customers\u201d by HMRC.<\/p>\n
Mariano delli Santi, the legal and policy officer at ORG, said: \u201cMy question is \u2018Where is the Information Commissioner\u2019s Office? Where is the regulator?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cThe ICO has the power to order the government to stop doing this.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy didn\u2019t they open an audit? Why didn\u2019t they open a formal investigation? Why didn\u2019t they issue an information notice, a legally binding request to HMRC to give them information about what they are doing, whether they carried out a DIPA, etc?<\/p>\n
\u201cThese are things that politicians are starting to ask, but MPs don\u2019t have the investigatory powers that ICO does.\u201d<\/p>\n
Tomlinson told Snowden that the national rollout was \u201cnot comparable with the pilot\u201d, with \u201cdifferent checks applied in the pilot\u201d.<\/p>\n
It appears from the answer to the second question posed by Snowden that the crackdown based on the Home Office data has now been paused.<\/p>\n
Tomlinson said: \u201cThere were no new child benefit compliance inquiries opened using Home Office international travel data in the period 1-30 November 2025. This was because our focus during that time was on reviewing the circa 23,500 already opened.\u201d<\/p>\n
An HMRC spokesperson said: \u201cThe pilot showed that we can use international travel data effectively to tackle error and fraud, and it remains our best assessment for this compliance activity.<\/p>\n
\u201cUsing travel data as a risk indicator allows us to narrow down our inquiries, meaning we contact less than 2% of child benefit customers rather than asking all recipients to regularly reconfirm their eligibility.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n If you have been <\/em>affected by this story and want to share your <\/em>experience, email: lisa.ocarroll@theguardian.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" More than 60% of parents who had their child benefit stopped by HMRC using incorrect Home Office travel data were not fraudulently claiming the support from abroad, it has emerged. The scale of the government\u2019s anti-fraud fiasco is four times higher than previously admitted, with 15,000 of the 23,500 parents targeted by HMRC now identified<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38585,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[4538,561,2335,681,3095,5075,95,134,630,2464,12094],"class_list":{"0":"post-38584","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-admits","9":"tag-benefit","10":"tag-benefits","11":"tag-child","12":"tag-crackdown","13":"tag-fraud","14":"tag-hmrc","15":"tag-labour","16":"tag-parents","17":"tag-targeted","18":"tag-wrongly"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}