A woman has had her child benefit payments stripped after she booked a flight overseas but never checked in or travelled on the plane.
Lisa Morris-Almond booked a flight from London to Oslo in April 2024 for a friend’s wedding.
However, the wedding in Norway was called off, meaning she did not check in to her British Airways flight nor leave the country.
Following the incident, she was contacted by tax authorities who, as part of a botched bid to crack down on benefits fraud, told her their records showed she had emigrated.
Three weeks ago, she noticed that her child benefit had not arrived as usual and rang the helpline, who told her to contact her bank.
After she contacted her bank and verified there was no error on the bank’s behalf, she contacted HMRC, who told her she had taken a flight to Norway and there was “no record of her return.”
“I said: ‘What are you talking about?’ I then explained that I was supposed to have gone to the wedding, but I didn’t go in the end, and he just said: ‘The records show you didn’t come back’,” Ms Morris-Almond told The Guardian.
She questioned why HMRC did not have records of her paying tax despite being a Pay As You Earn (PAYE) worker for the past 18 months.
The British woman was contacted by tax authorities, who told her their records showed she had emigrated
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PA
HMRC responded by telling her that they would send a new letter and she would be able to respond to it.
Ms Morris-Almond said: “This is just so ludicrous.
“I’m angry for everybody who has to go through this ridiculous state of affairs just because it’s some sort of glitch in the Government system that means they are unable to record who has left and who has returned to the country.
“Why is it that we have to sort out their mess?”
Ms Morris-Almond is one of 23,500 people who have had their child benefits stopped due to the Government’s crackdown on child benefit fraud.
Unlike others, she did not come into contact with border control or travel to the airport, which means it is possible the Home Office had access to passenger records.
The Home Office said operators of international travel services were “required by law to provide information to the Home Office about each service and the people on board for international journeys to and from the UK.”
They said this data was needed for immigration, customs, and police purposes, such as border security and law enforcement.
Another woman said she had been identified as an emigrant after flying out of the country and then returning on the Eurostar.
Liberal Democrats have tabled questions in parliament for urgent answers on the crackdown and how it received the green light, considering the number of issues that have now arisen from it.
The political party wants to know why HMRC chose Border Force data to determine eligibility rather than PAYE records.
HMRC has apologised twice for its errors and said on Tuesday that it was stopping the practice of suspending child benefit payments before asking questions.
It said it ran checks on 1.5 million of the 6.9 million beneficiaries and that 589 of the 23,500 parents have had child benefit payment restored after errors came to light.
The organisation is now urging people to call the number on their letters with PAYE checks and a new simplified set of answers needed on personal circumstances in place of the original 73 questions.
HMRC said it would reinstate PAYE checks before it approached people who may not have left the country but were falsely flagged as having emigrated.