Apology over figure that became too fat

The Department of Health today apologised for an extraordinary bungle which grossly inflated the number of fat people in Britain.

In an announcement which hit the headlines this week, the Health Minister Lord Warner revealed that no fewer than 900,000 people were claiming benefit because they were too overweight to work.

The cost to the taxpayer was said to be running at more than £70 million a week - a colossal £3.7 billion every year.

Today, however, embarrassed officials put out a correction, sharply slimming down the original statement from Lord Warner in Parliament.

The correct number, they said, should have been 900 rather than 900,000. And the weekly cost was a rather more modest £70,000.

The retraction, blamed on an "administrative error", was less than good news for Health Secretary John Reid, currently involved in a big drive to tackle the problem of obesity after a series of alarming reports from medical and other organisations.