Minister for civil society Nick Hurd has confirmed that the government is considering "topping up" the Transition Fund but warned that there are "limited means available".

Speaking at a Public Administration Select Committee meeting on funding the voluntary sector in the House of Commons today, Hurd also revealed that there were 1,700 applications to the Transition Fund totalling £170m.

Earlier this week £1.7m of the £100m fund was distributed between 18 charities. The largest grant is £198,899 to Bede House Association.

At today's hearing, Hurd battled criticism from one committee member who questioned why the fund was restricted to organisations with an income over £50,000 when the government was supposed to be "safeguarding the interests of grassroots organisations".

Chair of the committee, Conservative MP Bernard Jenkin, went a step further asserting that the Transition Fund was nothing more than a "mild amelioration" for spending cuts, that "couldn't possibly compensate for the loss of income" that charities are going to suffer.

"Aren’t we in danger of tempting people to believe what can’t be delivered which is that somehow the Big Society is going to replace the withdrawal of public funding from much of the charitable sector?" he said. "The quantums are just completely different, the timeframes are completely different."

Hurd rebutted that the government had "always been quite clear" that it cannot protect every voluntary organisation from the cuts and that it had to try to find some money "to help the most vulnerable organisations manage the transition".

"We had to set some tough criteria, we had to make a tough choice because resources were limited," he said.

Some £10m of the fund will be released during this financial year and the remaining £90m will be made available in the next. 

Meanwhile, the Cabinet Office has clarified a comment from Prime Minister David Cameron in the Observer on Sunday where he said the government would be launching a transition fund "this week" to help charities get ready to bid for contracts.

In response to a query from Civil Society as to whether this was additional money for the sector, a Cabinet Office spokeswoman said Cameron was merely referring to the existing £100m Transition Fund - which closed for applications on 21 January.