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Money Box

Child Benefit and Credit Cards

Money Box

BBC

Business

4.2825 Ratings

🗓️ 7 February 2026

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

More than 60% of parents who lost their child benefit because the tax office believed incorrectly they'd moved abroad, were in fact eligible for the benefit, which is worth at least a hundred pounds a month. As we've reported on this programme before, the mistakes were made after travel data was used to conclude parents had permanently left the UK, but actually many of them had simply been on holiday. The scale of the mistake has been shown in a written question raised in parliament, where the government revealed that 63% of payments were wrongly suspended. HMRC has apologised to customers who had their Child Benefit suspended incorrectly. It also told us that it estimates that £270 million of Child Benefit payments were incorrectly claimed in 2024-25 – with unreported residency changes a leading cause.

Credit card borrowing rose at the fastest annual rate for almost two years in November. The new data from the Bank of England shows that outstanding credit card balances rose to nearly 78 billion pounds, which is up almost 12 per cent on November the year before. What might be behind that rise?

And the pension ruling which could help boost your pension by 720 pounds every year.

Presenter: Felicity Hannah Reporters: Dan Whitworth and Jo Krasner Researcher: Eimear Devlin Editor: Jess Quayle

(First broadcast 12pm Saturday 10th January 2026)

Transcript

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0:00.0

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts.

0:05.6

Oh, hello. You have chosen a BBC podcast, but before you listen to it, we thought you might like our podcast too.

0:12.1

You might. You might. It is called Sightraught with me, Nick Grimshaw.

0:15.2

And me, Annie Mack. And we talk about the week in music.

0:18.2

All the news, all the cultural happenings in the UK and beyond.

0:22.2

And great guests. And it's on BBC Sounds. Yes, where you can also enjoy lots of playlists,

0:27.7

music mixes and live radio. Everything from my six music breakfast show to Radio 3 Unwind.

0:34.5

But obviously start with our podcast, sidetrack. Obviously. Obviously.

0:40.1

So if you like music, listen on BBC Sans.

0:40.5

Hello.

0:46.6

In today's Moneybox podcast, why is credit card borrowing rising faster than it has in almost two years?

0:50.1

Nearly one in four new cars sold last year was electric.

0:54.3

We'll answer Moneybox listeners questions about the plans for pay per mile charges,

1:00.0

and the little-known pension rule that could boost your pot by £720 a year. But first,

1:05.7

almost 15,000 families incorrectly lost their child benefit because the tax office wrongly believed they'd moved abroad. That's more than 60% of the cases where it was stopped. Despite HMRC telling Moneybox

1:12.7

in November, it was confident that the majority of suspensions were accurate. The mistakes

1:17.9

were made after travel data like flights was used to conclude families had permanently left the UK,

1:23.7

but many of them had simply been on holiday. An earlier pilot of the scheme included employment

1:28.6

checks, but those were scrapped when it was rolled out more widely. The scale of errors has now

1:34.2

been revealed in a written question raised in Parliament, where government figures show that of

1:39.1

the cases HMRC has now actually closed, suspending the benefit was only correct for 6% of the families.

1:46.9

Child benefit is worth at least £100 a month to parents.

...

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