FAMILIES were facing the loss of thousands of pounds of support every year yesterday after Prime Minister David Cameron committed to slashing in-work benefits.

More than 3.2 million families depend on child tax credits and working tax credits to top up their poverty pay, with the average family, working at least 24 hours per week, receiving £123.90 per week or £6,443 per year.

GMB general secretary Paul Kenny said the sums “may be the cost of a large brandy for Cameron but they are bread and butter for many working families.”

In a major speech at a school in Runcorn, Mr Cameron claimed he didn’t “underestimate for one second the difference that extra money can make.”

In the next breath however the millionaire PM singled out tax credits for the chop as part of £12 billion of welfare cuts.

Mr Cameron described tax credits as a “merry-go-round” that saw low-paid workers pay tax before being handed part of it back.

“We need to move from a low-wage, high-tax, high welfare society to a higher-wage, lower-tax, lower welfare society,” he said.

But the Tory leader did not propose any further increase in the minimum wage or personal tax allowance to compensate working families for lost income.

That will mean millions of working families and their children will be plunged further into poverty, TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said: “All we heard today is that the Prime Minister is planning to drive family incomes down by slashing the tax credits which give working people vital help to bring up children.

“He had nothing to say about how he will improve pay and conditions at work.”

Trade unions added that Mr Cameron’s speech definitively destroyed his claim that the Tories are the “real party of working people.”

“The PM just confirmed that this is the government that kicks low-waged workers, despite his rhetoric, when he ought to be offering them a helping hand,” said Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner.

Mr Cameron also used the speech to get in his excuses before the release of new statistics on child poverty on Thursday, which are expected to show a rise.

He described the way child poverty is measured as “absurd” and said he would not continue “papering over the cracks” with tax credits.

Setting out his alternative, he said his “one nation ideal” would deal with the “causes of poverty rather than just its symptoms.”

But his claims were blasted by the Child Poverty Action Group.

Chief executive Alison Garnham said: “No serious plan for the low paid begins with making them poorer by cutting their tax credits.

“You can’t have one nation if children’s lives, opportunities and life chances at every turn are shaped and limited by poverty.”

Labour MPs also pressed Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith over welfare cuts in Parliament.

Mr Duncan Smith claimed disabled people will be treated with “utmost kindness” by the government — just days before the Independent Living Fund is due to close.

He also refused to rule out further cuts to disability support, saying the full scale of cuts will be made clear in next month’s Budget.