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Every now and then, the curtain lifts and politicians glimpse what life is like for the many families who constantly live on the edge of financial disaster, writes Yvonne Roberts.

In the week in which we read how much the spoilt boys of Windsor - Charles and Andrew - spent on ferrying themselves around last year (£565,801 on private jets and helicopters for the useful Duke of York) - Tony Blair said sorry to the thousands facing hardship as a result of the tax credits fiasco.

More than £1.9bn was overpaid to 1.8 million families receiving child tax credit and working tax credit last year - and £500m was underpaid. A report by the Citizen's Advice Bureaux revealed the plight of those who had money clawed back without prior notice. Some had to give up work because they couldn't afford child care; others had to rely on Salvation Army food parcels. Ann Abraham, the parliamentary ombudsman, has said the Treasury must write off the cash.


The child tax credit is available to families on incomes up to £58,000 with children under 16. The working tax credit offers support to 1.8 million low income earners.

Dawn Primarola, the paymaster general, has promised reforms to the system. Without doubt, they won't go far enough.

The first and most vital question to answer is one that successive governments have avoided - how much does a family need to sustain a basic standard of living? Plainly, existing levels of support are insufficient when it takes so little push people into relying on handouts.

Second, why does the system have to be so complex - more than 20 per cent of those eligible for tax credits don't apply. Third, as people's wages rise, their tax credits fall and their income tax and national insurance payments go up. So, for two million people, for every extra £1 they earn, 60p is taken away by the state.


Fourth - an inquiry should be conducted into the extent to which tax-payers are shoring up employers who pay way below the odds - and make substantial profits. The argument is that without financial support, these jobs wouldn't exist. Let's see the evidence and decide whether some employers are being unfairly compensated.

The Daily Mail advocates freeing the low paid from income tax completely. For once, it's right. What's urgently required now is something far more substantial than weak reforms and an apology from the prime minister.