Consumer groups today slammed a Government deal that will see the six major energy companies pay merely an additional £225 million over three years to help people struggling with rising power bills and accused the Chancellor of backtracking on a Budget pledge to make the industry do more for vulnerable customers.

"The Government is letting the energy industry off lightly," a spokesman for Energywatch, the consumer watchdog, said.

Age Concern, Help the Aged and other consumer groups joined in the criticism of the Government's deal with the energy industry, saying that the Government was failing the most vulnerable and had done nothing to tackle the terrible injustice of charging the poorest customers more through pre-payment meters.

Help the Aged, which this week launched a legal challenge to the Government over fuel poverty, with Friends of the Earth, was also critical of the deal. Kate Jopling, head of public affairs at the charity, said: "This initiative will only just begin to scratch the surface. The Government cannot shirk its own responsibility to tackle this serious and growing problem."

Gordon Lishman, Director General of Age Concern, said: “A figure of £225 million over three years is well under the £150 million per year the government said it would be looking for in the Budget. Helping 100,000 households is just a drop in the ocean."

“The government is quite simply failing the most vulnerable by not taking more action on this issue. Only by establishing mandatory social tariffs can the problem really begin to be addressed,“ Mr Lishman added.

Meanwhile, uswitch.com, said the extra money would amount to less than £18 per household per year, if it were spread across all 4.5 million fuel poor households. In comparison, households are facing average bills of £1,048 a year.

Ann Robinson, director of consumer policy at uSwitch.com, said: “This is the clearest evidence yet that those in fuel poverty cannot expect the Government to lend them a helping hand out of the trap – this puts greater emphasis back on households to help themselves."

It emerged earlier this year that the big six energy companies were routinely charging the poorest customers an average of £255 a year more for gas and electricity, in what Energywatch, the industry consumer watchdog, branded as a £400 million rip-off.

Of the 4.5 million people living in fuel poverty - defined as spending more than 10 per cent of income on heating the home - about 1 million are using pre-payment meters, according to Government figures.

John Hutton, the Secretary of State for Business, said today that Britain's six major energy companies will pay an extra £225 million over three years to help people struggling with rising power bills.

Tariffs for prepayment meters, used typically by pensioners and the less well off, are up to 45 per cent higher than for internet customers.

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