When Labour won the 1997 General Election, they found a country whose child and pensioner poverty ratings were amongst the worst in the developed nations of the world. Over the next 13 years, Labour brought these two groups from sub-standard to a standard that was amongst the best in the world.

In 2006, after a year as Tory leader, David Cameron said, ‘to win the next election, we, the Tory Party, will have to continue with the benefits for pensioners’. He mentioned bus passes, winter fuel and cold weather payments, TV licences for the over 75s etc, and the credits and welfare that had helped Labour to win three consecutive elections, due, he claims, to Labour winning most of the so-called gray vote.

Has he kept his promise? Not really, because as you know George Osborne gives with one hand and takes with the other. In his first budget he uses Consumer Price Inflation in place of Retail Price Inflation in September of any year to determine the pension rise for the following April. He knew inflation would be lower using CPI than RPI, cutting the pension by over 2 per cent already. Then, in 2012, he decided to freeze pensioners’ tax allowances thereby cutting the pension cost by over £1 bn. The freeze was on again last year, this year and next year.

What did he do with the money he saved? He cut the top rate of tax from 50p to 45p. Remember, he gives with one hand and takes with the other, so it was the pensioners who paid for the millionaires’ tax reductions.

Before the 2010 General Election, I wrote in these pages ‘don’t vote for an Eton educated prime minister, a warning from history’. Here is another one for 2015. What David Cameron giveth, George Osborne can taketh away!

M J Warner, Groundwell Road, Swindon