Ministers are continuing their attempts to improve the lot of pensioners as a special conference for older people meets on Wednesday.

Ahead of his keynote speech to the conference the Social Security Secretary Alistair Darling has announced that a special summit with employers' leaders will be held later this year to tackle age discrimination.

Mr Darling said he will also hold talks with advertisers, TV, radio and newspaper representatives on how to address negative images of older people in the media.

But pensioners have not been happy with the performance of the government in recent months, following the 75p weekly increase on the state pension, which was greeted with anger by many pensioners groups.

The government's recent poor showing in the local elections was, in part, due to elderly people show their disapproval with the government.

No earnings link

Mr Darling said the conference will also look at ways of preparing the UK for the future, as in 30 years time over half the population will be over 50.

But he again spoke out against linking the increase in the state pension to earnings.

He told the BBC: "Some people want us to uprate it in line with earnings. Had we done that the poorest pensioners would have lost every penny because of the way the benefits system takes their income into account, and the ones at the top end of the scale would probably have not noticed the difference."

He said the government's approach of targetting the poorest pensioners first, was merely the first stage in a process of tackling pensioner poverty across the board.