Officials have warned that around 12 million households across the UK are now spending more than 10% of their income on energy bills.

MPs at the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee heard from Emma Pinchbeck, Chief Executive at Energy UK who said that bills were still too high for millions of customers.

Ms Pinchbeck said: “Bills are still double what they were 18 months ago and we’ve got about 12 million households, which is about 40% of customers, spending more than 10% on energy. That’s the previous definition of fuel poverty.

“So I think we need to look at targeted support but we also need to look at this as an affordability crisis across the piece and how that intersects with the wider cost of living.

“We are up for having those conversations but I don’t think that it is as simple as just looking at the Priority Services Register. I think this is still a really big problem.”

Emma Pinchbeck added that customer calls to suppliers were up about 300% on previous years and requests for additional support were also up 300%.

The chief of the trade association which represents energy suppliers said: “What that indicates is we’ve got many more houses moving into what has been considered vulnerability previously at pace and households who are not indicating to us that they are vulnerable.”