TORY ministers must take “urgent action to prevent a poverty time-bomb going off” this autumn, the Big Issue warned today.

The magazine joined former prime minister Gordon Brown’s new “anti-poverty coalition” to highlight the plight of low-income families ahead of the next rise in the energy price cap, which is expected to see annual bills top £3,000 in October.

The ex-Labour leader told the publication, which raises funds to fight homelessness and for other social causes, that millions of people are “standing on the edge of a financial precipice.”

He said: “We are calling for urgent measures to cover the cost of a further £1,000+ rise in fuel bills on top of April’s already painful increases.

“The grim facts are that 27.7 million people in 14.5m households are staring at fuel poverty in October — an unprecedented 53 per cent of the UK’s population.”

Mr Brown, who was PM between 2007 and 2010, said the regional variations are “as big as they are frightening,” with both Wales and Scotland expected to see more than 60 per cent of homes affected, as opposed to the 47.5 per cent predicted in London. 

One-third of statutory pensions will be taken up “just paying fuel bills,” predicted the former chancellor, who also warned that “one in every two children will lose out as fuel and food bills eat up the lion’s share of families’ weekly budgets.”

Lord Bird, Big Issue co-founder and cross-bench peer, stressed: “If the government does not act now, millions of people will be left in dire poverty or lose their homes.”

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Child Poverty Action Group, Labour’s Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford and 56 faith leaders have also joined Mr Brown’s initiative.