Labour leader Ed Miliband (pictured) has attacked the UK Government’s proposed changes to Child Benefit during Prime Minister’s Question Time.

The new Leader of the Opposition pressed Prime Minister David Cameron to explain why it was fair for families where one parent stayed at home to lose out while those with two salaries who earned tens of thousands a year more between them kept the benefit, the Daily Telegraph reports.

Under the Tory Government’s proposal as it stands, two working parents earning just under the higher-rate tax threshold of £44,000 could take home up to £88,000 and retain their payouts while a household with just one income of £45,000 would lose theirs.

Many Tory MPs are unhappy at the cut, feeling it unfairly hits stay-at-home mothers.

Mr Miliband reminded the Prime Minister of his words at a “Cameron Direct” event before the election in which he spoke out in support of universal child benefit.

The move will hit the 15 per cent of taxpayers who earn more than £44,000 and save the Government around £1 billion a year.

The Labour leader said that hundreds of thousands of middle class families with stay at home mothers would be hit by the benefit changes, which he described as neither fair or reasonable.

Mr Miliband said: “By my reckoning there are hundreds of thousands of families where one parent stays at home, there are hundreds of thousands of families and the question they are asking is this: why should a family on £45,000 where one person stays at home lose their child benefit, £1,000, £2,000, £3,000 a year, but a family on £80,000 where both partners in a couple are working should keep their child benefit?”

He added that the move would hit people such as deputy head teachers and police inspectors with spouses who stayed at home to look after their children.

But Mr Cameron said that it was not reasonable for low income families in the Labour leader’s constituency of Doncaster North who earned a sixth of his wages as an MP to be contributing towards his child benefit.

He said: “This is a difficult choice because as we deal with the deficit we do have to ask better-off people to bear their share of the burden.”

Mr Cameron suggested in the wake of the furore surrounding the announcement of the policy that the Government might seek to ameliorate the situation of stay-at-home parents through other measures contained in the coalition’s programme for Government.

He told the BBC: “If you look, for instance, at the issue of the stay-at-home mother, we do talk in the coalition Government about having some sort of transferable tax allowance to help couples in that way.

“So there are things that we will try and do to make sure that all of what we do, if you look across the piece, to deal with the deficit is fair.”

Here, Minister for Children Barry Andrews suggested that the Government might look at a similar move in its budgetary considerations.

However senior ministers such as Foreign Affairs Minister Michéal Martin and Social Protection minister Eamon Ó Cuiv were more circumspect, with the former citing administrative difficulties and Mr Ó Cuiv suggesting that such a move might be unconstitutional.