Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment his Department has made of the potential financial impact on adoptive parents of the average time taken to have their application for child benefit approved.

The information requested is not readily available and could only be provided at disproportionate cost.

While information is collected on birth child, adopted child and stepchild as part of the Child Benefit claim form, this information is not made available to HMRC for statistical analysis, and therefore the data cannot be used to categorize children/claims into adopted children.

HMRC do have a “where’s my reply Tool” Check-when-you-can-expect-a-reply-from-HMRC which shows general processing time frames when customers have submitted a Child Benefit claim.