The UK government is launching a sweeping crackdown on child benefit fraud, targeting families who continue to claim payments after moving abroad—a move officials say will save taxpayers £350 million over the next five years. The ambitious plan, which expands on a successful pilot program, will see the number of specialist investigators jump from just 15 to over 200 beginning in September 2025, according to multiple reports from BBC, The Independent, and other outlets.
Child benefit, one of the country’s most widely accessed welfare payments, currently supports 6.9 million families and 11.9 million children across the UK. The benefit is worth £26.05 per week for the eldest child and £17.25 for each additional child, providing vital support for families with children under 16, or under 20 if they remain in approved education or training.
The crackdown comes after a pilot scheme—jointly run by the Public Sector Fraud Authority, the Home Office, and HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC)—matched a random sample of 200,000 child benefit records with international travel data under the Digital Economy Act 2017. The pilot, which ran for less than 12 months, saw a small team of 15 investigators strip payments from 2,600 claimants who had left the UK but continued to receive child benefit. This effort alone saved taxpayers £17 million, as reported by BBC and The Independent.
Building on this success, the government is now scaling up the operation tenfold. From September, over 200 investigators will comb through benefit eligibility, using international travel data to identify claimants who have left the country and are no longer entitled to payments. Cabinet Office Minister Georgia Gould stated unequivocally, "This government is putting a stop to people claiming benefits when they aren't eligible to do so. From September, we'll have ten times as many investigators saving hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayer's money. If you're claiming benefits you're not entitled to, your time is up."
Under the current rules, claimants who are outside the UK for more than eight weeks—except in exceptional circumstances such as medical treatment or the death of a family member, which allow for up to 12 weeks—are no longer eligible for child benefit. It is the claimant’s responsibility to inform HMRC upon leaving the country. The new specialist team will check child benefit records against international travel data, and any cases where a claimant appears to have left the UK will be referred to investigators for further scrutiny. Every case is reviewed by a human investigator, and HMRC will contact families directly as part of any investigation, ensuring that errors—whether genuine mistakes or deliberate fraud—are handled fairly and swiftly.
Officials are keen to emphasize that this isn’t just about rooting out fraud, but also about protecting the integrity of the welfare system and ensuring that taxpayer money goes where it’s truly needed. "This crackdown on fraud and error protects hardworking families who play by the rules and ensures every pound of taxpayer money goes where it should," said a government spokesperson, as reported by The Independent.
The government also hopes that the increased visibility of the rules will help prevent people from unintentionally claiming benefits when they are no longer eligible. According to BBC, one goal of the campaign is to raise awareness, so that honest mistakes—such as forgetting to notify HMRC after moving abroad—are minimized.
The scope of the crackdown may soon widen. The government has signaled intentions to examine other benefits that people might be claiming from overseas, with the aim of recovering even more taxpayer funds. This comes amid broader efforts to tackle benefit fraud, which, according to Department for Work and Pensions estimates, accounted for £6.5 billion in overpayments in 2024/25—about 2.2% of all benefit expenditure. Rates of overpayment are highest for means-tested benefits like Universal Credit.
Child benefit is a lifeline for millions, but the rules are clear: only those residing in the UK are generally eligible, and exceptions are tightly controlled. For families whose children remain in education after 16, eligibility continues only if the education is full-time—defined as more than 12 hours a week of supervised study or course-related work experience. This can include A levels, International Baccalaureate, T levels, Scottish Highers, NVQs, and most vocational qualifications up to level 3. Home education also qualifies, provided it started before the child turned 16 or, in some cases, after if there’s a statement of special educational needs.
The government’s announcement comes at a politically sensitive time. Labour backbenchers and anti-poverty campaigners are increasing pressure on the government to scrap the so-called "two-child cap" on child benefit—a policy introduced by the Conservatives in April 2017, which prevents parents from claiming benefits for any third or subsequent child. This cap has been linked by critics to rising levels of child poverty across the UK. The issue is set to take center stage this autumn, when Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson are due to publish a long-awaited child poverty strategy. The strategy, originally slated for spring, was delayed to coincide with Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s second Budget, now expected in November.
Sir Keir has left the door open to scrapping the cap, though he cautions that removing it is not a "silver bullet" for eradicating child poverty. Many MPs, particularly from Labour’s backbenches, argue that ending the cap would be the single most effective measure to reduce child poverty nationwide. The debate highlights the complex balancing act facing policymakers: cracking down on fraud and error to protect public funds, while also responding to calls for more generous support for families in need.
The pilot program that inspired the current crackdown was conducted under the Digital Economy Act 2017, which allows for the sharing of personal data across public sector bodies for specific purposes. This legal framework enabled officials to match child benefit records with international travel data, flagging potential cases of fraud for further investigation. Importantly, each flagged case was reviewed by a human investigator, and families were contacted directly to resolve any issues—whether accidental or intentional.
For now, the message from the government is clear: as the expanded team of investigators gets to work this September, those who have been wrongly claiming child benefit from abroad should expect to be caught—and honest families can expect the system to work more fairly for them.
