{"id":84520,"date":"2025-08-22T07:51:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T07:51:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/84520\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T07:51:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T07:51:09","slug":"crackdown-planned-on-people-wrongly-claiming-child-benefit-abroad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/84520\/","title":{"rendered":"Crackdown planned on people wrongly claiming child benefit abroad"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leila Nathoo<\/p>\n

Political correspondent<\/p>\n

Becky Morton<\/p>\n

Political reporter<\/p>\n

\"GettyGetty Images<\/p>\n

The government is planning a crackdown on people who continue to claim child benefit after leaving the UK, in a move it expects to save \u00a3350m over the next five years.<\/p>\n

Claimants who are outside the UK for more than eight weeks will generally no longer be eligible for the benefit unless there are exceptional circumstances.<\/p>\n

A new specialist team will use travel data to track if claimants have gone abroad and are no longer entitled to payments.<\/p>\n

It follows a pilot which stopped child benefit being incorrectly paid to 2,600 people who had left the UK.<\/p>\n

A team of 15 investigators stopped around \u00a317m being incorrectly paid out in less than 12 months.<\/p>\n

From next month, more than 200 people will be working on the team.<\/p>\n

The government hopes the move will also raise awareness of the rules to avoid people continuing to claim the benefit by mistake when they are abroad for an extended period.<\/p>\n

Child benefit is one of the most widely accessed forms of benefit in the UK, paid to more than 6.9 million families.<\/p>\n

It is understood the government is now planning to look at other benefits that people are claiming overseas to see if more money can be clawed back.<\/p>\n

Overall, benefit fraud has increased since the pandemic, although levels have started to drop in recent years, with renewed efforts by government to tackle the issue.<\/p>\n

There was an estimated \u00a36.5bn in benefit overpayments due to fraud in 2024\/25, according to figures from the Department for Work and Pensions<\/a>, equivalent to 2.2% of all benefit expenditure.<\/p>\n

Rates of overpayments tend to be higher for means-tested benefits like Universal Credit.<\/p>\n

People responsible for children under 16, or under 20 if in approved education or training, can claim child benefit. <\/p>\n

It is worth \u00a326.05 a week for the eldest child and \u00a317.25 a week for any younger children.<\/p>\n

Claimants must inform HMRC if they go abroad for more than 8 weeks as after this length of time they will no longer be eligible for the benefit, unless there are exceptional circumstances<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The time limit for going abroad for medical treatment or due to the death of a family member is 12 weeks.<\/p>\n

Cabinet Office Minister Georgia Gould said: “This government is putting a stop to people claiming benefits when they aren’t eligible to do so.<\/p>\n

“From September, we’ll have ten times as many investigators saving hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayer’s money.<\/p>\n

“If you’re claiming benefits you’re not entitled to, your time is up.”<\/p>\n

The pilot, which was carried out by the Public Sector Fraud Authority, the Home Office and HMRC, matched a random sample of 200,000 child benefit records with international travel data.<\/p>\n

It was conducted under the Digital Economy Act 2017, which introduced a framework for sharing personal data for specific purposes across parts of the public sector.<\/p>\n

Where the data suggested the claimant had left the country, specialist investigators from HMRC performed their own checks before deciding whether benefits were being claimed incorrectly.<\/p>\n

The government said every case was reviewed by a human investigator and HMRC would contact families directly as part of any investigation.<\/p>\n

It is understood the small amounts involved per individual means it often does not make sense for the government to seek a prosecution if someone is found to be claiming the benefit fraudulently.<\/p>\n

\"Thin,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Leila Nathoo Political correspondent Becky Morton Political reporter Getty Images The government is planning a crackdown on people…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84521,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-84520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84520"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84520\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}