MARTIN Lewis has warned of potential "consumer strikes" over soaring energy bills.

Households across the UK have been left with rising food, fuel and energy prices as inflation hits 9.4%.

Its means people's money is not going as far as the price of essentials such as food and petrol all rocket in the cost of living.

Asked on ITV's flagship political show Peston last night whether he feared civil unrest, Mr Lewis said: "The big movement that I am seeing is an increase of growth in people calling for a non-payment of energy bills, mass non-payment.

"Effectively a consumer strike on energy bills and getting rid of the legitimacy of paying that.

"It’s small at the moment - there’s a Twitter handle with about 5k followers."

Mr Lewis described the current sentiment as "close to a Poll Tax" situation, with the energy bill price cap set to rise in October.

The Poll Tax was a policy brought in by former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1989, which proved incredibly unpopular and eventually led to rioting.

Mr Lewis added: "We need the government to get a handle on that because once it starts becoming socially acceptable not to pay energy bills people will stop paying energy bills and you're not going to cut everyone off."

Robert Peston asked Mr Lewis if he had heard anything constructive from the Conservative leadership candidates so far.

He said: "My biggest frustration is this core financial cataclysm was missing from the debate.

"It was mentioned in a cursory basis, it was mentioned as an adjunct to talking about tax cuts.

"Tax cuts of course will put more money in people’s pockets, but they won’t help the poorest who have the least financial resilience because most of them are on the full state pension and nothing else and those on the lowest end of universal credit don’t pay tax.

"They don’t earn enough to pay tax so it won’t help them and my great frustration is the lack of this in the debate, the lack of what’s coming in October."