The tax rate was scrapped by Gordon Brown five years ago in a move Miliband said was a “very bad mistake” that he was “determined to put right”.

Re-introducing it would be a “progressive choice” that would benefit some 25 million basic rate taxpayers and would show Labour is on the side of working people, he said in a speech in Bedford.

“[If re-elected] we would put right a mistake made by Gordon Brown and the last Labour government,” he said.

The idea of a mansion tax was first proposed by the Liberal Democrats before the last election, though the Conservatives opposed the move and the policy was not adopted by the coalition government.

Miliband criticised the government’s decision to scrap the 50p tax rate for those earning over £150,000 from April this year.

“We need very successful entrepreneurs in Britain, making profits, being rewarded,” he said. “But we can’t succeed as a country just by hoping wealth will trickle down from those at the top to everyone else, our economy won’t turn around that way.”

Treasury sources told the BBC that Labour had no “economic credibility”.