BIRKENHEAD'S MP has disclosed shock figures showing the sky-high cost of covering bedroom tax arrears in Merseyside.

Frank Field has compiled a report showing councils last year paid out a staggering £4.6m in emergency housing payments to try to"paper over the cracks of the human disaster" created by the tax.

Mr Field, recently voted by fellow MPs to be chairman of the Commons Work and Pensions Committee -  the powerful body examining Government welfare cuts - called on ministers to scrap the tax.

Mr Field, who served briefly as a welfare reform minister under Tony Blair, reveals today that expenditure on discretionary housing payments to tenants pushed into arrears by the bedroom tax last year was:

£791,502 in Wirral - up by £317,962 from £473,540 in 2013-14.

£513,732 in St Helens - up by £195,477 from £318,255. 

£308,043 in Halton - up by £109,949 from £198,094.

£562,268 in Sefton - up by £3,328 from £558,940. 

He said: ‘We know from what’s happening in our communities that the human cost of the bedroom tax is devastating.

"This cost has been borne by some of the poorest families in Merseyside who find themselves now consistently short of rent money.

"But these latest figures highlight an additional and growing cost to taxpayers, who have been asked by the Government to paper over the cracks of the great bedroom tax disaster.

"Might the Government now learn from the chaos and misery the bedroom tax has caused tenants, social landlords and taxpayers, and immediately bring this vicious policy to an end?"

A discretionary housing payment is a short-term payment from your council to help cover some housing costs.

The Government gives each council a limited DHP grant to help mitigate some of the effects of the tax.

Mr Field said despite last year’s increase in expenditure in Merseyside, the limited grant fails to ensure all tenants requiring emergency help with housing costs can receive it.

Under the tax, which came in in April, 2013, social housing tenants of working age who are deemed to be occupying more bedrooms than they need face reductions in housing benefit of around £12 to £22 a week.

The Government says its housing benefit changes will save £500m-a-year and free up under-used housing stock for overcrowded families.

But an investigation by the BBC in 2014 examined 300 out of 380 councils cross England, Wales and Scotland and found just 6% of tenants had moved while the rest were willing to take a benefit cut instead.

Researchers also found 28% of social housing tenants had fallen into arrears for the first time.