The Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith says that the UK’s tax credit system has been systematically targeted by welfare cheats from around the world that has cost UK taxpayers at least £10 billion.

Writing for the Telegraph, Mr Duncan Smith says that Labour set up a system of tax credits for lower paid employees that is “haemorrhaging money” and “wide open to abuse” because there are less checks on tax credit welfare claimants than there are for other applicants for welfare.

He says that HMRC conducts around 34,000 checks each year on tax credit claims that are classified as high risk, less than ten per cent of the number of investigations into benefit fraud.