Home office travel records used in a controversial anti-fraud crackdown under which thousands of parents lost their first-born families still living in the UK, it has emerged.
The Pilot Scheme saved HMRC £17m but left 46% of targeted families wrongly suspected, a margin of error of more than 1% of the 5% scientifically acceptable.
In Northern Ireland, 78% were incorrectly identified as not having returned from trips abroad and 129 families were squeezed out of the 28 countries that actually did.
Kim Johnson, the Labor MP for Liverpool Riverside has called for an urgent investigation after being contacted by several victims who were stopped.
The results of the pilot raise fundamental questions about the use of home office data in the most fraudulent way, experts say.
“Relying on home office data for sentencing purposes is always problematic,” said Colin Yeo, a court barrister.
The detailed background of the Anti-Fraud Initiative is not yet known, but it is “alarming” to see the office’s data being used “that they don’t get the weight they put on it,” he said.
The data emerged two weeks after an investigation by the Guardian and Investigative Website details revealed that thousands of families were stopped as part of a government crackdown.
Cases include a woman who got her benefits stopped after booking a flight to Italy that she didn’t board because one of her children had an epileptic seizure on the way out of the gate. Another spoke of losing benefits even though the flight she had booked was canceled because a wedding she was supposed to attend was canceled.
Liberal Democrats and the Greens have raised concerns in Parliament.
Liberal Democrat Tim Clement-Jones asked the government in a written parliamentary question to explain why it was “not publishing business cases and fixing business protection”. Green Peer Natalie Bennett asked what internal analysis procedures were put in place because the child benefited from freezes with light.
The Guardian first reported last month that hundreds of families in Northern Ireland had their benefits withheld after they returned to the UK via Dublin Airport.
It is fitting that around 23,500 letters cutting child benefit have been sent to parents across the country including families in Rochdale, Liverpool, London, Grasdow.
Hmrc said it will no longer use Dublin Airport travel data to stop fraud as it is part of a common travel area that does not cross payment records and the person concerned first.
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Parents said they felt like they were being treated like criminals after receiving the letters. Some say they are still coming this week, more than a week after HMRC apologized for the distress it had caused.
Some parents report prompt and respectful responses from the dedicated team the team put in place to deal with improper child suspensions.
Others, however, said they could not get help, and some foreign nationals reported that customer service staff still insisted that they submit more evidence so that they are not liars.
“I spent the whole day requesting letters from schools, nurseries, the GP, while my partner was participating in the trip.
“I’ve only been out of the country for three days, and my partner and son for a week,” said Angela, who called HMRC for help nine times in an hour on Wednesday and over on Friday without getting through.
“I find it irritating that I have been accused of meeting HMRC’s requirements as an individual, a company director and a charity truestee,” he said.
A spokesman for HMRC said: “We are sorry for the people who were wrongly suspended. We are taking immediate action to update the process before customers are suspended.
“We remain committed to protecting taxpayers’ money and are confident that the majority of suspensions are appropriate.”