Families wrongly stripped of child benefit in HMRC fraud crackdown

A mother who travelled from Liverpool to Amsterdam with her autistic children is among an increasing number of families in the UK who have had their child benefit wrongly stopped as part of an HMRC crackdown on benefit fraud.

- Lisa O’Carroll Luke Butterly

After it was revealed on Sunday that about 350 families in Northern Ireland had their child benefit frozen based on incomplete travel data captured by the government, it emerged that families across the rest of the UK had also been hit.

An investigation by the Guardian and the Detail has found that among those who have had their child benefit wrongly stopped are a man who went on a five-day holiday with his son to Italy from Stansted airport; a family from Hove who flew in and out of Gatwick on a trip to Australia; and a woman who flew to Bristol from Belfast for her grandmother’s funeral but returned via Dublin.

“It does feel like you are being punished for going away,” said Cerys, a music teacher and mother of three who took her family on a one-day trip to Amsterdam from John Lennon airport in Liverpool, with the sole purpose of familiarising her two autistic children with flying.