- guardian.co.uk, Monday October 1 2007 12.21 BST
Hips are 'clumsy and ineffective', says Grant Shapps, the shadow housing minister. Photograph: the Guardian.
A Conservative government would scrap home information packs and reward social housing tenants for good behaviour, the party's conference in Blackpool was told today.
As the Tory party sought to make public services a key battleground in the next general election - which could be only weeks away - a succession of three shadow ministers responsible for housing, education, and health outlined "modern Conservative" policies to woo voters at the polls.
These included:
· a year on year increase in NHS investment,
· a new cancer strategy,
· anonymity for teachers facing allegations of assaulting pupils, and
· more parental "choice" over schools, including scope for parents or community groups to open up new schools.
On housing, Grant Shapps, the shadow housing minister, received an ovation when he told party activists he would abolish home information packs, which are being rolled out in stages by the government.
Mr Shapps said: "The experts ridiculed them. The industry doesn't want them. The market doesn't need them. And I can pledge to you today, the next Conservative government will scrap them."
The Tories have fought a fierce campaign against Hips, which were introduced in stages earlier this year after a series of delays.
Mr Shapps accused ministers of ignoring repeated warnings that, far from streamlining the house-buying process, Hips were "clumsy and ineffective".
Mr Shapps also promised that a Conservative government would introduce a new scheme to "reward five years of good tenant behaviour" by giving people an equity share in their own social housing.
As housing provision looked set to be a key battleground at the next election, Mr Shapps signalled clear blue water with Labour on imposing increased housing density on local authorities.
He accused ministers of "bulldozing" through development plans against local wishes to meet their housing targets and confirmed that the party would clamp down on "garden grabbing" where new homes are squeezed onto spare patches of land behind existing properties.
On health, the Tories' spokesman, Andrew Lansley, promised to improve stroke care and enshrine NHS values in statute as he vowed to "set the NHS free".
Mr Lansley said that, just as the Tories had transformed enterprise in British industry in the late 1970s, so in the next decade "we must transform the enterprise and innovation of our public services".
He attacked the low uptake of drug treatments for stroke care and cancer as he promised to speed up the process for licensing effective drugs in the UK.
He said: "I believe we can now say with confidence that the Conservative party is the party of the NHS."
Many of the policies emerge from the recommendations made in the party's public service review, entitled Improving our Public Services, and led by Stephen Dorrell and Lady Perry.
The public service session was used to launch a new campaign, "Comprehensively Excellent", to identify the qualities of the UK's best state schools that can be spread to other schools.
Michael Gove, the shadow schools secretary, also pledged to end the so-called compensation culture in order to bring adventure into learning.
He told delegates that children were turning to the "dangerous environment of gang culture" because they were denied excitement on school outings.
He added: "We will change the law to shift the balance against the health and safety bureaucrats, to dismantle the compensation culture, to let our children enjoy the wind in their hair and the thrill of testing themselves outside their comfort zones."
Mr Gove also pledged to give schools greater power to exclude thugs and promised to grant anonymity to teachers who are victims of false allegations of abuse as part of a discipline drive.
He told party activists: "In the classroom, we will shift the balance of power, so it is the troublemaker who has something to fear, not the teacher."
He pledged to remove the "bureaucratic barriers" and "administrative obstacles" that, he said, prevented charities and churches from opening new schools.
Mr Gove attacked changes to the national curriculum that he said had led to Winston Churchill, the wartime prime minister, being written out "because he is seen as yesterday's man".
A Tory government, he said, would have a curriculum that "delivers on the basics, equips the next generation for a world of change and gives them back the chance to take pride in our country's history".
He also said that the Conservatives would stop the closure of special schools.
