Chancellor Gordon Brown last night promised a new deal for millions of pensioners in a bid to avert growing anger over the way the Government has treated the elderly.

On the day official figures showed that the number of pensioners living in poverty increased by 100,000 during the first two years of the Labour Government, Mr Brown said there would be a new pensioners' credit.

That and other proposals - unveiled as part of Mr Brown's political fightback from a difficult week - are expected to ensure that the poorest pensioners' incomes will be increased from £78 to at least £90 a week.

Mr Brown told the BBC's Nine O'Clock News: "Every pensioner is going to benefit from the new proposals we are putting forward - in particular those on modest incomes and those who are the poorest."

He added: "We are determined to end pensioner poverty in this country and we are determined all pensioners, by whatever means, can enjoy a rising standard of living."

Mr Brown said millions of people would benefit and it would help especially those with modest savings and on modest occupational pensions.

He said any pensioner with an income less than £100 or a pensioner couple with an income of less than £150 would be eligible for the new pensioner credit.

Gordon Lishman, director general of Age Concern England, said: "Age Concern is delighted that Gordon Brown has recognised what Age Concern said to him last month when we recommended that £90 a week was the absolute minimum that older people could live on.

"We would prefer that he put extra money into the state pension rather than relying on means-tested benefits. Around 750,000 pensioners do not claim income support and therefore will not benefit."

Opposition parties dismissed the move. Shadow Social Security Secretary David Willetts said: "Pensioners are fed up because of the paltry increase in the basic state pension. They don't want more means-testing and they certainly don't want tired old re-announcements."

Liberal Democrat social security spokesman Steve Webb said: "The Government are making an already complicated system still more complicated. They have let the basic pension wither so people have to claim a means-tested top-up and now they want people to have to claim a separate tax credit as well."

The Government hopes the new proposals will help to dampen the seething anger over this year's 75p pension increase, which has threatened to dominate next week's Labour conference.

Many Labour MPs, fearful that the revolt of the "grey vote" could be even more damaging than the fuel crisis, have been hoping Mr Brown will use his party conference speech to unveil new help for pensioners.

An opinion poll last night also showed older voters turning against Labour.

A Mori poll for Help the Aged put the Tories ten points ahead of Labour among voters aged 55 and over, overturning a four point Labour advantage from a month ago.

Help the Aged director general Michael Lake said that with pensioners outnumbering 18 to 24-year-olds by two-to-one and twice as likely to vote, the Government ignored their concerns at its peril.

"There are now clear signs of a groundswell of discontent in the older population," he said.

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