SIR – With the new ‘flat rate’ state pension due around 2016 promising to make people better off, including the self-employed previously excluded from state second pension provision, etc, is it going to be all things to all OAPs?

I have serious doubts over this, because having tried both the coalition pensions minister and the shadow DWP secretary, who also happens to be my MP, I have been unable to get a straight answer as to whether my wife, an existing pensioner, will get the new £155 a week, or – as she fears– far less.

All we have had from both sources so far is the usual political gobbledygook which leaves no-one any the wiser.

But since 1945, at least there has always been discrimination in state pension provision – women getting it at age 60, men at 65 – until about ten years ago when New Labour equalised the ages on a rolling basis over a five-year period so that after next year both will get a pension at the same age in future.

However, for women already with a state pension, particularly if also members of an occupational pension scheme, then it looks like they will almost certainly be about £25 a week worse off than any ‘new’ pensioner, even though they may have paid more National Insurance years in.

I challenge any representative of Labour, Conservative or Lib Dem parties to prove otherwise.

D S Boyes, Upper Rodley Lane, Leeds