Cameron 'must return to core values'

A senior Tory MP is to call for Conservative leader David Cameron to return to core values on issues like tax, Europe and marriage to restore the party's "soul".

Former deputy leader Michael Ancram, in a 30-page document that amounts to an alternative agenda for the party, will warn the leadership to stop "trashing" its Thatcherite past and stop presenting the Conservative leader as the "heir to Blair".

Mr Ancram's comments are likely to be seen as an attack on Mr Cameron's drive to move the Conservatives into the political centre ground.

The remarks, by a man with an ultra-loyal record in three decades as an MP, threaten to provide a rallying point for Tory traditionalists unsettled by Mr Cameron's approach.

In extracts from the document published in a newspaper, Mr Ancram called on the Tory leader to show voters that the Tories had not lost the values and principles which made up their "timeless" soul.

While praising some of the proposals from the Tory policy review groups, he said: "However good they are they will not of themselves alter the current public perception of the Conservative Party as lacking an overall sense of vision and direction and a clear projection of what it stands for."

He added: "It is vital that these proposals are presented within a framework of the principles and beliefs which in every generation, however differently articulated, have formed the solid and unalterable foundations of Conservatism which have historically been the key to our electoral success."

Mr Ancram's comments come on the day a proposal to give council tenants state aid worth 10 per cent of the value of their home to help them buy a property will be unveiled by a Conservative policy group.

The scheme is designed to break up "ghetto" estates by encouraging social housing tenants to get a foot on the first rung of the private property ladder.

If they left the social rented sector, they would receive the share as a cash payment towards the price of their first property, in what would amount to a major extension of the Thatcher government's right-to-buy scheme.

The scheme is the highlight of a package of measures on social housing in a report to be published today by the Tories' Public Services Improvement Policy Group, co-chaired by former health secretary Stephen Dorrell and Baroness Perry, which will also include proposals on education and health.

The group's proposals are not binding on Mr Cameron, but will clearly be considered as he draws up his manifesto for the next general election.

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