Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the Answer of 9 June 2015 to Question 1239, on child benefit, what estimate he has made of the potential costs of obtaining the requested information.

The cost considered by the Treasury to be disproportionate is £850.

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) are unable to provide an answer to question 1239 within proportionate costs as information stored on the Child Benefit system does not contain details of i) income of claimants and ii) whether claimants are in a single or joint claim.

This means to obtain the information, additional data (such as Self-Assessment) would have to be matched to claimant’s details to obtain their income. Further matching to further datasets would then be required to determine whether the claimant is a single or couple claimant.