Nearly £500million Overpaid In Housing Benefit under Coalition

Nearly £500million housing benefit has been wrongly paid out and not recovered since the Coalition was formed, official figures show. The Government said that the "cumulative amount of outstanding housing benefit overpayments" have increased from £843million to £1.32billion between April 2010 and September 2013.Rachel Reeves, Labour’s shadow Work and Pensions secretary, said: “It’s staggering that when families are facing a cost-of-living crisis, the amount of Housing Benefit which is overpaid has gone up under David Cameron’s government to £1.3billion.”Labour also claimed that the number of government fraud investigators had fallen by five cent despite the rising figures. Read more on the Daily Telegraph website.