It was a letter that left Eve Craven, a mother from the UK, bewildered. Eighteen months after a short five-day trip to New York with her son, she opened a notice from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) informing her that her child benefit payments had been stopped. The reason? Official records showed no evidence of her return to the UK, even though she had been back for well over a year. "It gave me a month basically to give them all the requested information to prove that I'd come back to the UK," she told BBC's Money Box programme. "It's just a very big ask for something that they've messed up on, and they should have been able to sort out themselves."
Craven's experience is far from unique. On November 9, 2025, HMRC announced it was reviewing its controversial decision to suspend child benefit payments for approximately 23,500 households. The move followed a government crackdown on child benefit fraud, launched in September 2025 and designed to save £350 million over five years. The new system, which allowed HMRC to use Home Office international travel data to determine whether claimants had left the country permanently, was supposed to target fraudsters. But it quickly became clear that the net had been cast far too wide.
Under normal circumstances, child benefit is stopped if the recipient spends more than eight weeks living outside the UK. However, many of those affected by the recent suspensions said they had only left the country for short holidays. According to The Guardian, almost half of the families initially flagged as having emigrated were still living in the UK. The numbers in Northern Ireland were even more stark: 78 percent of families flagged as having left the country had, in fact, returned home—often using routes that the government’s data simply couldn’t track.
This is where the story gets tangled in the quirks of geography and policy. The problem first surfaced in Northern Ireland, where families often fly out of Belfast and return via Dublin in the Republic of Ireland, before driving back across the border. UK and Irish citizens enjoy the freedom of movement under the Common Travel Area, and routine passport checks are not conducted at the land border. As a result, the UK government has no official record of these families’ return, leading to thousands being wrongly flagged as having emigrated.
HMRC’s pilot scheme, which compared travel records with its own benefit database, was meant to be a high-tech solution. Instead, it resulted in a wave of complaints and confusion. According to The Guardian, the scheme saved HMRC £17 million but left 46 percent of the families targeted incorrectly suspected of fraud. During the pilot, 129 families in Northern Ireland were flagged as having left the country when only 28 actually had.
The political fallout was swift. MPs on the Treasury Select Committee demanded answers from HMRC, with Dame Meg Hillier voicing concerns about the reliability of the travel data and the consequences for families. "Is anyone who did not board a flight, train or ferry leaving the UK this year at risk of being considered to have emigrated?" she asked. She also raised questions about whether HMRC’s assessment of emigration status could affect individuals’ tax or immigration standing—a worry echoed by many affected parents.
In response to the mounting criticism, HMRC issued a rare public apology. A spokesperson told The Independent, "We’re very sorry to those whose payments have been suspended incorrectly. We have taken immediate action to update the process, giving customers one month to respond before payments are suspended. We remain committed to protecting taxpayers’ money and are confident that the majority of suspensions are accurate." The updated process means that anyone flagged as having left the UK now gets a month to provide proof of residence before payments are halted—a small but significant change for families caught up in the confusion.
HMRC also confirmed to BBC's Money Box that it would be reviewing all past cases, using PAYE (Pay As You Earn) employment data to help determine whether claimants were still living and working in the UK. Where continued employment is found, payments will be reinstated and any missing amounts backdated. The review is expected to be completed by the end of the week following November 9, 2025.
The government’s anti-fraud initiative, despite its good intentions, has exposed the limits of relying on data alone to make decisions about people’s lives. The Common Travel Area, a longstanding arrangement between the UK and Ireland, means that many journeys simply aren’t captured by official systems. Recognizing this, HMRC has said it will stop using Dublin airport travel data to assess fraud in future and will not suspend benefits before cross-checking with PAYE records and contacting the claimant directly.
For families like Eve Craven’s, the ordeal has been both stressful and time-consuming. After providing evidence of her return, her child benefit payments were eventually reinstated, and the missing money backdated. But the episode has left many wondering how such a sweeping error could have happened in the first place—and whether it might happen again. As Dame Meg Hillier put it, parents want assurances that their tax records and immigration status will not be unfairly affected by flawed data or bureaucratic mistakes.
The government, for its part, insists that the majority of suspensions are accurate and that the crackdown on fraud is necessary to protect public funds. A government spokesperson told BBC News, “We remain committed to protecting taxpayers’ money and are confident that the majority of suspensions are accurate.” Yet the scale of the errors revealed by The Guardian—almost half of all families flagged as having emigrated were still living in the UK—suggests that the system has a long way to go before it can be considered truly reliable.
As the review draws to a close, thousands of families are waiting anxiously to see if their benefits will be restored. The episode has shone a light on the challenges of modern government administration, where big data solutions promise efficiency but can sometimes fall short of the messy realities of everyday life. For those caught up in the confusion, the hope is that lessons have been learned and that future efforts to tackle fraud will be more targeted—and more humane.
For now, HMRC’s review offers a chance to right some wrongs and restore faith in a system that millions rely on. But for many, the experience has been a reminder that even the best-intentioned policies can have unintended—and very real—consequences.
