Former Deputy Prime Minister Lord John Prescott has called on Age UK to stop placing adverts in the Daily Mail in the wake of its controversial article about Ed Miliband's late father.

But Age UK refused to comment when approached by civilsociety.co.uk today and has ignored repeated questions from the public on its Facebook and Twitter accounts. 

Last week, Prescott tweeted to his 202,000 followers asking Age UK: "Will you still advertise with the Daily Mail after they smeared WWII veteran Ralph Miliband? #droptheMail". His tweet contained a link to a Political Scrapbook article that allows users to tweet companies who advertise with the paper and includes Age UK among its list.

Prescott’s colleague in the House of Lords, Sir Alan Sugar, later joined in on the action telling his 3.2 million followers that "advertisers should pull out of the Daily Mail until Paul Dacre resigns or is fired".

The Daily Mail has been subject to a barrage of criticism following an article it ran accusing Ralph Miliband, the deceased father of Labour leader Ed Miliband, of “hating Britain”.  There have been calls for advertisers to pull ads from the national tabloid and yesterday there were protests outside the newspaper's offices.