The Parliamentary Ombudsman, Ann Abraham, has released a report calling Gordon Brown's system of tax credits "unfair" to some of Britain's poorest families.
Ms Abraham also accused HMRC staff of failing to apply overpayment guidelines properly, which had led to some "unduly harsh decisions" that had "caused extreme worry and anxiety to many low income families ... The outcomes of some of those decisions seemed to fly in the face of the aims of the tax credit policy." As a result of this mess, the report found that 363,000 families are being pushed into debt.
This is really not what tax credits should be about.