Labour to crack down on child benefit loophole costing Government '£350M'

Currently, people who leave the UK for more than eight weeks are not allowed to claim the benefit, but some continue to do so nonetheless.

Today, ministers announced that a specialist team scouring international travel data and 200,000 child benefit records to find wrongful payments will be significantly expanded in a bid to save cash.

It comes after a successful trial in which 15 investigators stopped 2,600 people receiving the benefit after moving abroad, saving around £17 million over the past year.

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Ministers believe the team, which will consist of more than investigators, will save £350 million over the next five years and could see “tens of thousands” of people lose the benefit.

Cabinet Office minister Georgia Gould said: “From September, we’ll have 10 times as many investigators saving hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.

“If you’re claiming benefits you’re not entitled to, your time is up.”

Child benefit is the most widely accessed benefit in the UK and is paid to more than 6.9 million families, supporting 11.9 million children.

The Government has made cracking down on wrongful benefit payments a significant part of its efforts to cut costs, with overpayments estimated to have cost £9.5 billion in the year to March.

These efforts include the Public Authorities (Fraud, Error and Recovery) Bill currently making its way through Parliament.

Ministers have billed the legislation as delivering the “biggest ever crackdown on fraud against the public purse”, including measures that allow the Government to recover money directly from fraudsters’ bank accounts.