Child Benefit
The question
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many and what percentage of people have had their child benefits incorrectly suspended from (a) Yeovil constituency, (b) Somerset and (c) England in each of the last three years.
Answered by Lucy Rigby
HMRC does not hold information on incorrect suspensions of Child Benefit. This is because, where there is doubt over a customer’s Child Benefit entitlement, HMRC will check eligibility and take appropriate action to safeguard public money. This may involve suspending payment whilst enquiries are ongoing. In cases where eligibility is later confirmed, it does not mean that the suspension was incorrectly applied.
However, HMRC has acknowledged that the way it expanded compliance using international travel data between August and October last year impacted some eligible customers, where upfront checks of UK employment through PAYE were excluded on 23,794 enquiries. It took swift action to address the issues including retrospective PAYE checks and automatic reinstatement of 5,327 payments by the middle of November 2025.
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