UK woman who booked Oslo flight but did not fly loses child benefit ‘because she emigrated’ | Child benefits

A woman who booked a flight from London to Oslo but did not check in or travel has had her child benefit stopped by the UK government. Tax officials told him his records showed he had emigrated.

Lisa Morris-Almond is one of thousands of people who have had their children’s benefits frozen as part of a failed crackdown on benefit fraud.

She was due to travel to Norway for a wedding in April 2024, but her friend canceled it a few days before and Morris-Almond did not check in for her British Airways flight.

But three weeks ago she realized her child benefit was not arriving as usual and called the child benefit helpline and was told to contact her bank, a routine request.

When he called back to say there was no error with his bank, HMRC said he had flown to Norway and “there is no record of him returning”.

“I said: ‘What are you talking about?’ Then I explained that I was supposed to go to the wedding but I didn’t, and he said: ‘Records show that you didn’t return.’ “He didn’t even hear what I said.”

He then questioned why HMRC had no records of him paying tax in the UK as a PAYE worker in the last 18 months.

“They said they would send me a new letter and I could respond to it,” Morris-Almond said.

“This is ridiculous. I’m angry at everyone who has to go through this ridiculous situation just because of a flaw in the government system that means they can’t keep track of who left the country and who came back.”

“Why do we have to unravel their confusion?”

When contacted by the Guardian, HMRC said it could not comment on individual cases.

Morris-Almond is one of 23,500 people who have had their child benefits stopped by HMRC in the last few weeks as part of the government’s crackdown on benefit fraud.

But unlike the others, he did not encounter border control or travel to an airport; This shows that Home Office immigration operations have access to passenger records.

In response to earlier questions, the Home Office said operators of international passenger services were “required by law to provide information to the Home Office about each service and persons on board for international journeys to and from the UK”.

They said the information was needed for police purposes, including immigration, customs and border security, and law enforcement.

The Liberal Democrats have called for an urgent response to the crackdown and submitted questions to parliament to determine how it was given the green light, given the amount of problems that have arisen.

Another woman said she was mistakenly marked as an immigrant after leaving the country and boarding the Eurostar.

The Liberal Democrats, who are neck-and-neck with Labor in recent opinion polls, want to know why HMRC has chosen Border Force data over PAYE records to assess eligibility for payments.

They also asked whether the government had taken steps to correct inaccurate Border Force data or conducted an impact assessment of the pilot program before going to print.

HMRC has twice apologized for its mistakes and said on Tuesday it had stopped the practice of first suspending child benefit payments and then asking questions.

He said The agency, which controls 1.5 million of 6.9 million beneficiaries, said it had a “duty to combat errors and fraud”, adding that 589 of 23,500 parents had received their child benefit back since the errors were revealed.

It is urging people to call the number on their letter to replace the original 73 questions with a new set of simplified answers needed for PAYE checks and personal situations.

It also said PAYE checks would be reinstated before reaching people who had not left the country but were flagged as immigrants based on faulty data.