Labour admits 60% of parents wrongly targeted in HMRC child benefit fraud crackdown

Exclusive: Scale of government’s anti-fraud fiasco is four times higher than previously admitted

More than 60% of parents who had their child benefit stopped by HMRC using incorrect Home Office travel data were not fraudulently claiming the support from abroad, it has emerged.

The scale of the government’s anti-fraud fiasco is four times higher than previously admitted, with 15,000 of the 23,500 parents targeted by HMRC now identified as legitimate beneficiaries living in the UK.

It means 63% of parents targeted in the anti-fraud debacle first reported by the Detail and the Guardian were legitimate claimants.

The admission by the government was revealed in a written answer to a parliamentary question tabled by the Conservative MP for Fylde, Andrew Snowden.