Tax credits: over-inflated, but still a life raft for many

The cost of Gordon Brown's idea has ballooned unacceptably since the crash, but there are few signs that employers will pay up and relieve the pressure

There is nothing easy about making work pay. Tax credits were a way to boost wages in an era when firms were either unable or unwilling to do the right thing. They were expanded in 2003 by a chancellor, Gordon Brown, who saw them as a necessary response to international pressure on workers' earnings.

It was a prescient move that shielded millions of people from the worst the global economy could throw at them. What Brown could not foresee was that the credits would become a major post-crash safety net, inflating their cost from 9bn to 30bn by 2010.