The Daily Telegraph reports that “Fraudulent and wrong benefit claims hit £3.5bn record”. There are two obvious points to make about that claim. The first is that this figure is based on a combination of fraud and error, and the largest part of the figure is error. The estimate for fraud is £1.2 billion out of £3.4 billion. The second point is that this is a very long way from being a ‘record’, if by that they mean a new high; the 1997 Green Paper on fraud put the figure (ludicrously) over £7 billion.