Government Tax Credit system wasted over £9Billion

4.00.00pm UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 10th Jul 2007

The Liberal Democrats have revealed that Gordon Brown's flagship tax credit system is on course to have wasted over £9bn in the first 3 years. The figures have been published ahead of this week's release by HMRC of new figures on fraud and error in the tax credits system for 2004/05.

As Gordon Brown walked into Number 10 he left behind a system in chaos. Tax Credit Fraud and error continues to be almost double then that of any other benefit. This is completely unacceptable. Unless there is radical and rapid reform to tax credits, we will continue to have a system which is prone to error and wide open to abuse.