This time last year the Treasury admitted child benefit was exported to 30,000 children in other EU countries in 2014-2015. If you ask for this year’s numbers however, they aren’t keen to spill the beans…

Ministers have refused to answer FIVE parliamentary questions on the cost of sending child benefit to other EU member states. Leave MPs William Wragg and Anne-Marie Trevelyan have tried to get answers, only to be told that providing a response would cause “disproportionate cost” to the taxpayer. Which is odd since Treasury minister David Gauke admitted in 2012 that the data on the number of claimants “is available from a database maintained by HM Revenue and Customs”. These figures were released without a fuss when requested by MPs in previous years. Yet updating us with the latest numbers is coincidentally now judged to be too expensive. Almost as if the Treasury is holding the numbers back until June 24…