Health minister Ivan Lewis is pushing ahead with plans to use the Human Rights Act to protect older people in care homes from abuse.

Lewis pledged to include care home residents in the legislation and unveiled a £2m, three-year project to be launched by the government into abuse in state-run care homes.

Ministers are also planning on overturning a court ruling which means council-funded elderly people in private homes lack protection from abuse.

Last year, law lords had ruled that the Human Rights Act did not offer any protection to older people residing in privately-run homes following the case of an 83-year-old Alzheimer's patient threatened with eviction.

Thursday's Guardian newspaper reported that a change to the law could protect as many as 300,000 vulnerable people.

Lewis said: "There is a difference between abuse and elderly people not being treated with the dignity they deserve but both are equally unacceptable."

The government review into abuse of elderly people in NHS hospitals will be run in conjunction with the Comic Relief charity.

"This £2m study will help to inform our national campaign to put respect for dignity at the heart of all care services," Lewis said.

Lewis also said that the government was looking into setting up an independent adjudicator to focus on private care home complaints.