[UK] Three Tory MPs to learn about 'inner-city' poverty

from 24 Dash

Three Conservative MPs will leave Westminster behind today to spend a week working on projects to tackle poverty in inner-cities.

Their efforts are part of a project set up by leader David Cameron and one of his predecessors, Iain Duncan Smith, to reconnect the party with social problems afflicting Britain.

Mr Duncan Smith, who now runs the Centre for Social Justice think-tank and chairs a Tory policy review group, will be one of the first MPs to take up the Inner City Challenge.

He has cleared his diary this week to work with excluded children in Bradford.

Mr Duncan Smith said: "We want to get MPs out of Westminster to learn what real life is like."

The MPs who have cleared their diaries this week are among the first tranche of five, mainly newcomer-MPs to take part over the summer.

Those taking part are:

Iain Duncan Smith, who will join Bradford's Lighthouse Group, helping excluded children return to mainstream education;

Nick Hurd, who will work the Living Well Trust in Carlisle, which is regenerating the rundown Raffles estate;

Douglas Carswell, with the Robertson Road Project in Vauxhall, south London, providing housing for rough sleepers;

Shailesh Vara, who will join the Kids Company, in Brixton, south London, on July 31, working with disadvantaged children;

Ed Vaizey, who will work with the homeless on the Kings Arms Project, in Bedford, from August 14.

They will be followed by five, more senior, MPs in the autumn, five members of the shadow cabinet in the spring and five who have served for two parliaments next summer.