MPs ask HMRC to explain child benefit error that froze payments to parents

Many families were wrongly suspected of fraud after data showed they had flown out of the UK but not returned. Photograph: NicoElNino/Alamy

MPs are demanding answers from HMRC over a child benefit error in which payments to 23,500 families were stopped as part of an anti-fraud crackdown.

Meg Hillier, a Labour MP and chair of the House of Commons Treasury select committee, has written to the permanent secretary of HMRC asking who made the decisions, why they were made and whether compensation would be offered to the victims.