- A new specialist team is expected to stop over £350 million
in Child Benefit fraud and error over the next five years.
- The move follows a successful pilot where just 15
investigators stopped around £17 million in wrongful payments in
under 12 months.
- Thousands of people who left the UK but carried on claiming
Child Benefit have already been removed from the system.
Child Benefit will be stripped from tens of thousands of people
who have moved abroad in a major clampdown expected to save £350
million over the next five years.
A new specialist team will use international travel data to track
if claimants have gone overseas, so are no longer entitled to the
payments.
The move follows a successful pilot which has already removed
2,600 people from the system who had left the UK but continued to
claim Child Benefit.
A team of just 15 investigators successfully prevented around £17
million being incorrectly paid out in under 12 months.
The government is rapidly expanding this highly effective unit as
part of the Plan for Change. The new team will have over 200
people from next month, sending a clear warning to those trying
to scam the system.
Cabinet Office Minister said:
This government is putting a stop to people claiming benefits
when they aren't eligible to do so.
From September, we'll have ten times as many investigators saving
hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayer's money.
If you're claiming benefits you're not entitled to, your time is
up.
Child Benefit is paid to over 6.9 million families, supporting
11.9 million children. It is one of the most widely accessed
forms of benefit in the UK and is administered by HM Revenue
& Customs (HMRC).
If a claimant is outside the UK for more than eight weeks, Child
Benefit payments may stop unless there are exceptional
circumstances. Claimants must inform HMRC if they are outside the
UK for this length of time or longer.
The pilot was carried out by the Public Sector Fraud Authority,
the Home Office and HMRC. Under the Digital Economy Act, they
matched a random sample of 200,000 Child Benefit records with
international travel data.
Where the data suggested a claimant had left the country,
specialist investigators from HMRC stepped in to perform their
own checks before deciding whether benefits were being claimed
incorrectly. The pilot was concluded in under 12 months and
delivered savings of over one million pounds per investigator.
Alongside tougher checks, this renewed drive will raise awareness
of the rules, recognising that some errors are genuine mistakes.
Every case is reviewed by a human investigator and HMRC will
reach out directly to families as part of any investigation to
resolve matters swiftly.
This crackdown on fraud and error protects hardworking families
who play by the rules and ensures every pound of taxpayer money
goes where it should.
