UNLESS you're the kind of person who shops at Harrods and holidays in St Tropez, £8,000 is a lot of money in anyone's (cheque) book.

But to the Tustin family of Evesham it's a particularly huge sum.

The Tustins receive tax credits - a Government scheme designed to ease the burden on the poorest people in the country - so it's safe to assume they're not exactly loaded.

But their finances are about to get even more stretched, because the agency that doles out tax credits has just asked the Tustins for a big wad of it back - £8,000, to be precise.

The tax credit people say they got their sums wrong and the Tustins shouldn't have had the money in the first place.

Naturally, given the byzantine nature of this kind of thing, this was news to the Tustins. They received the money in good faith and have long since spent it on things they needed.

As they reveal on page four, they are outraged at the "incompetence" that has landed them with a debt they can ill afford to pay. We agree.

Everyone makes mistakes, but Government bureaucrats seem to make more of them than anyone else.

From the chaos at the Child Support Agency to the recent debacle of the Passport Office's new computer system, incompetence seems to be built into the system.

It's bad enough missing that budget flight because your passport didn't arrive in time, but if you can't feed your children because of a crippling debt that arose from a Government mistake, that's another matter.

It wasn't the Tustins' fault the Government messed up. They should be allowed to keep the money.