Benefit chaos

The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) has admitted that two of the government's three targets for reducing billions of pounds of fraud and error in the benefits system have been missed. For example, the housing benefit's rate of overpayment is up 13 per cent since 2002 with customer and official error accounting for the great bulk of the losses.

The huge number of fraud and error is caused by the complex benefit system which Gordon has created over the years.