[UK] Cameron launches poverty-fighting agenda

From Financial Times

By James Blitz, Political Editor

David Cameron has attacked Gordon Brown’s decade-long strategy to deliver social justice, declaring that the chancellor’s “ever-growing state cannot win the war on poverty on its own”.

Setting out the broad thrust of his “poverty-fighting agenda”, the Conservative leader criticised Mr Brown’s “top-down, centralised” approach to assisting the poor, arguing that Labour “means well but fails badly”.

Mr Cameron said: “The state has become a guarantor of means-tested dependency, of the status quo, not of a new start”. Conservative policy would highlight how the voluntary sector had “the crucial role to play” in giving people a second chance to escape from poverty, drug addiction and homelessness.

The focus of the speech was on how organisations working within the voluntary sectors, or engaged in what was called “social enterprise”, could often get people out of poverty far more efficiently than government agencies.

Standing alongside Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader who now heads the party’s centre for social justice, Mr Cameron said: “We’ve both seen how the voluntary and social enterprise sectors provide intensive, long-term, holistic care to our vulnerable people. The public sector does a great job but its targets and caseloads make it difficult to provide the necessary level of help for the most needy.

“Small community and voluntary groups who care for broken lives deserve financial support, the use of which isn’t micromanaged by Gordon Brown’s huge army of bureaucrats,” he added.

Mr Cameron’s speech was the latest in a string of declarations that reposition the Tories sharply to the left and create the impression the party is in the centre-ground of politics.

“The last nine years should have taught us that poverty is simply too important an issue to be left to the Labour party,” he said.

The speech also amounted to Mr Cameron’s most concerted attack yet on the chancellor whom he is almost certain to face across the dispatch box after Tony Blair quits office. Mr Cameron’s incessant focus on Mr Brown is designed to unsettle the chancellor who cannot respond head-on at key events such as prime minister’s questions.

The government sought to counter Mr Cameron’s speech by highlighting comments made by John Redwood, the Tories’ economic strategy guru, who suggested the Tories must emphasise their commitment to tax cuts.

Mr Redwood told the e-politix website: “I believe we need to stay competitive in taxation terms.

“In the most successful and competitive places, the world is moving ever on-wards towards lower and lower taxes. So we will be looking at that and we will ask ourselves the question: Is Britain still tax competitive?”

Des Browne, chief secretary to the Treasury, hit out at the comments saying: “On the day his economic strategy chief John Redwood calls for ‘lower and lower taxes’ at the expense of investment in public services, we get yet another speech from David Cameron without any substance.

“It is this government that since 1997 has worked with the voluntary sector to lift 700,000 children and 2m pensioners out of poverty and created 2m more jobs.

“It is not credible for the Tories to talk about tackling poverty without acknowledging the role played by the New Deal, the child tax credits and child benefit, while also proposing to adopt a third fiscal rule which would mean cutting investment in SureStart, childcare and education,” he said.