Ministers launch crackdown on claiming child benefit from abroad

Thousands of people living abroad will have their child benefit stopped as the UK Government clamps down on people wrongly claiming the payment.

People who leave the UK for more than eight weeks are no longer eligible for the benefit, other than in exceptional circumstances, but some continue to claim it incorrectly.

Ministers have announced that a specialist team scouring international travel data and 200,000 child benefit records to find wrongful payments will be significantly expanded in a bid to save more money.

Taxpayers

It follows a successful trial in which 15 investigators stopped 2,600 people receiving the benefit after moving abroad, saving around £17 million over the past year.

That team will now be increased to more than 200 investigators, with the Cabinet Office suggesting this could see “tens of thousands” of people lose the benefit and save £350 million over the next five years.

Cabinet Office minister Georgia Gould said: “From September, we’ll have 10 times as many investigators saving hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.

“If you’re claiming benefits you’re not entitled to, your time is up.”

Child benefit is the most widely accessed benefit in the UK and is paid to more than 6.9 million families, supporting 11.9 million children.

Costs

The UK Government has made cracking down on wrongful benefit payments a significant part of its efforts to cut costs, with overpayments estimated to have cost £9.5 billion in the year to March.

These efforts include the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill currently making its way through Parliament.

Ministers have billed the legislation as delivering the “biggest ever crackdown on fraud against the public purse”, including measures that allow the Government to recover money directly from fraudsters’ bank accounts.