A poll of more than 2,000 adults conducted by ComRes for the National Housing Federation showed 59 per cent of people want the policy to be dropped entirely.

Two thirds of Liberal Democrat voters and a third of Conservative voters oppose the policy, which 79 per cent of Labour voters feel it should be abandoned.

The research also showed 87 per cent of the public believe those who need a spare bedroom for a sick or disabled relative should be exempt from the policy.

The NHF also revealed this week that 51 per cent of affected households were pushed into arrears in the first three months of the policy.

David Orr, chief executive at the NHF, said: ‘Potential Labour voters in particular believe the bedroom tax shows the Government is out of touch with the lives of real people.

‘We need a commitment to repeal the bedroom tax before yet more damage is done and tens of thousands more people spiral into debt as a result of this ill-conceived policy risk the roofs over their heads.’

MEANWHILE>>>>

Labour’s shadow minister Liam Byrne at the same conference suggested that the Bedroom tax might be scrapped:

Mr Byrne said: ‘The survey work we have done shows there are no homes for 90 per cent of the people hit by the tax to go [in to] That is your experience, that is our experience in Birmingham, that’s the picture that we are building up, up and down the country.

‘And I think what has been very striking over the past few months is that the evidence has grown so fast that this is obviously a tax that is going to cost more than it saves.’

He said the knock-on costs of the measure, including costs to the National Health Service, are ‘striking.’ He gave an example of a man in Liverpool requiring home dialysis, who has had to move home to smaller property and now needs an ambulance everyday to get to hospital because he no longer has space for a dialysis machine at home. He said: ‘What does that ambulance pass? It passes three-bedroom houses in Merseyside boarded up because nobody can afford to  live in them. How crazy is that?’