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Around 13,700 families had their benefits suspended incorrectly. Photo by Jan Kopřiva on Unsplash
A controversial government anti-fraud scheme that incorrectly stripped thousands of parents of their Child Benefit payments is to resume, despite ongoing concerns about inaccurate Home Office travel data on which the crackdown is based.
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) used flawed Home Office travel records, including airline bookings that were never used, to suggest incorrectly that families had emigrated and were fraudulently claiming the support from abroad.
These included a family whose child had a seizure at the departure gate, and others who made business trip bookings but then changed their plans without cancelling the outward journey.
Around 23,800 families had child benefit payments stopped late last year as a result of the scheme.
Around 13,700 were later found to have had their benefits suspended incorrectly, while about 9,600 were found to be ineligible. A further 500 cases remain unresolved.
The final “success rate” of 40% was revealed on 13 March from the HMRC permanent secretary John-Paul Marks to the treasury committee.
This is significantly lower than previous predictions by HMRC, which said it was “confident” that “the majority” of cases were suspended correctly. An internal document obtained by The Detail put the expected final figure at 64%
Mr Marks indicated that they would be going back to the full fraud crackdown in May using Home Office data.
“We intend to keep case opening volumes low until May to reassure ourselves that the process is working well before increasing volumes.”
Andrew Snowden MP urged the government to "think again" before resuming the scheme until the National Audit Office investigation is complete later this summer.
“The first iteration of this scheme had disastrous consequences for many families and the government have still not come clean on what went wrong, and most importantly, what lessons were learned to ensure the same failings don’t happen again”, he said.
Revised figures
The committee began investigating the issue following a joint investigation by The Detail and The Guardian.
In January, Mr Marks told the committee that at least 71% of the claims were suspended incorrectly. However, he has now revised that figure down to around 60%.
“Through our assurance work, we discovered that we had under-estimated the effectiveness of our compliance activity,” he wrote.
The number of those found to be incorrectly claiming may change - in the pilot around 14% of the cases deemed ineligible were later overturned on appeal.
He also revealed the number of errors in Northern Ireland, where the issue first emerged because holiday makers were using Dublin Airport which the Home Office has no access to for data.
“The corrected number of customers resident within Northern Ireland is around 800, whereas we had previously reported 346,” he said.
While HMRC said the scheme was not paused, it was effectively halted, with no new cases opened after the problems first came to light in late October.
One contributing factor for the high error rate in the rollout of the crackdown was the failure to cross check addresses with HMRC’s own PAYE records.
However HMRC have said it was “unable to completely disaggregate” cases confirmed via PAYE checks from those relying on customer evidence.
They said they will now check PAYE records before contacting families, but this will not cover those who are self-employed or on benefits, which make up the majority of cases.
Concerns raised by advice groups
Documents obtained by The Detail suggest advice groups were given little warning about the scheme.
HMRC said there was a single meeting in January 2025 - “held over Microsoft Teams with no minutes or transcript” - where the measures announced in the Autumn Budget 2024 were discussed.
This included that additional staff were to be hired “to tackle fraud and error in Child Benefit and Tax-Free Childcare”.
In October 2025, representatives from an advice group contacted HMRC officials after journalists began asking questions about claims being suspended based on flight records.
“Can anyone from Child Benefit confirm whether this kind of check is being conducted and the process for dealing with it?,” a benefits advisor asked.
“I don't remember this being discussed in any of the forums before”, they said in another email.
“We really have little choice but to respond to media about this, particularly as we would want to try and encourage contact with our helpline. The clearer I can be about the resolution that has been put in place, the better”.
In December, HMRC officials told advice agencies that “after extensive feedback” they were revising the letters sent to families, introducing a “more supportive tone” and clearer explanations of why additional information was required.
Parents had complained that they were frightened and stressed after receiving the original letters suspending their benefit and demanding answers to 73 questions, including medical records, school reports and bank statements.
Advice organisations raised concerns about the new letters, including unclear deadlines for responding and requests for detailed financial evidence such as bank statements.
One response suggested HMRC should explicitly ask claimants to confirm whether they had travelled at all, noting that some people flagged by the system had never actually taken the flights recorded in the data.
“It would be helpful if you could ask them to confirm whether or not they have actually travelled as indicated as there were examples where people did not, in fact, travel despite having made the arrangements to do so,” one commented.
Another said that giving families a month to respond “seems quite a tight turnaround given that letters from HMRC can take weeks to arrive.”
A HMRC spokesman said they have introduced a number of changes to the system, meaning fewer people will be sent letters in the first place, they will have longer to respond, and benefits won't be suspended in the first instance.
“We’ve strengthened our approach with extra safeguards and our work so far has prevented nearly 10,000 customers claiming incorrectly, protecting tens of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.”
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