Conservative Party Leader, David Cameron, has announced the establishment of 6 Policy Groups .

• The aim is to engage expertise from outside politics to tackle the challenges facing Britain today.

• Each policy group will comprise around 8 people from outside politics with expertise on each of the challenges and 2 conservative politicians (but not front bench).

• Over the next 18 months they will do detailed work to identify all of the issues and relevant facts surrounding each challenge and to look at creative ideas.

• They will not set party policy. But once that process is complete, the information they have gathered will be used to help inform a policy development process.

David Cameron said: "Yesterday, I set out the six big challenges facing our country. These challenges are complex and interconnected. They don’t sit inside simple boxes. They need serious, long-term thinking.

So that’s exactly what we will do - and the hard work starts today.

Today, I’m announcing my plans for long-term policy development in the first of those six big challenges: social action for social justice in Britain.

For far too long, piecemeal policies and short-term solutions have addressed the social problems, which affect people's lives, particularly in our inner cities.

We will take a different approach.

The group will be chaired by Simon Wolfson and the Rt. Hon John Redwood MP. Simon Wolfson is Chief Executive of Next plc and, on his appointment, was the youngest CEO of a FTSE 100 company. John Redwood is a former Chairman of a plc and Cabinet Minister.

Some of the areas the Policy Group will examine include:

• Improving workforce skills;

• A modern transport infrastructure;

• Reducing regulation.

Announcing the launch, the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne said:

"Simon Wolfson is at the forefront of the new generation of British business leaders who understand the need to compete in the twentieth-first century. I’m delighted that he will join with John Redwood in co-chairing this vitally important group."

Commenting on the launch Mr Wolfson said:

"If we are to deliver good public services then we need a vibrant economy in order to pay for it. That is why it is essential that we put wealth creation back on the political agenda in Britain and address issues such as building a strong 21st century infrastructure, liberating business from regulation that often has no benefit or purpose and making sure that the public sector is efficient."

Mr Redwood added:

"The British economy is moving in the wrong direction and is increasingly becoming as uncompetitive as the European economies. This is going to be a serious study looking at ideas for building prosperity for the future.

It will study the causes and consequences of poverty in Britain and will develop practical ideas to empower the least well-off to climb the ladder from poverty to wealth.

It will examine the challenges facing young people and their parents – focusing on family policy, parenting and childcare, support during the early years and barriers to the fulfilment of teenage aspiration.

I’m delighted to announce today the first two members of the Social Justice Policy Group.

The Chairman will be Iain Duncan Smith, who over the past few years has demonstrated an inspiring commitment to this agenda. His expertise and knowledge of the subject, along with the support of his Centre for Social Justice, will provide this Policy Group with terrific leadership.

Iain’s Deputy on the Group will be Debbie Scott, Chief Executive of Tomorrow's People. Tomorrow's People is a national charity with a 21-year track record of success in helping people out of long-term unemployment, homelessness and welfare dependence into sustainable jobs and self-sufficiency.

We will soon be announcing the other members of the Social Justice Policy Group, and more details of how the Group will engage the widest possible audience in finding long-term solutions for the entrenched problems our society faces.

A key area of study for the Group will be the provision of new ideas on the treatment and rehabilitation of young people affected by drugs and alcohol.

The Group will consider the care of the elderly and disabled – looking in particular at the quality of care and the financial and other problems affecting carers.

The Group will consider how we can strengthen our society – and will develop ideas to empower the voluntary sector, to foster social enterprise, to increase the scope of community action and to encourage neighbourhood revival.

And the Group will also investigate how to expand the scope and impact of corporate citizenship.

I want our policy development process to be open, transparent and challenging. I want our Policy Groups to be free to think creatively about the vital issues that fall within their remit.

I’m confident that under Iain’s Chairmanship and with Debbie’s support, the Social Justice Policy Group will make a profound contribution to our agenda for change, optimism and hope.

I am deeply committed to social action for social justice. In the end, the test for our policies will not be how they affect the better off, but how they help the worst-off in our country – empowering them to climb the ladder from poverty to wealth."

Former Conservative Party Leader, Iain Duncan Smith commented: "I am delighted that David Cameron is beginning his leadership with the formation of this Policy Group and the commitment to social justice that it embodies. It has been said that there isn’t a social problem that hasn’t been solved by someone, somewhere. The Policy Group’s work will be built on the solutions that Britain’s rich network of social entrepreneurs have already found to some of the country’s deepest social problems. The work of this Group will make a major contribution to the building of a Conservative Party that offers policies that are good for the floating voter and good for Britain's most disadvantaged communities

Gordon Brown likes to boast about his record in creating jobs but his record is poor.
When Labour came to power, 23% of 18-24 years olds were not working. This has now risen to 26%.

A Conservative Government will ensure that it always makes sense to work.
I am delighted that the vice-chairman of the Social Justice Policy Group is Debbie Scott.
Debbie runs Tomorrow’s People, a national charity with a remarkable track-record in helping people back to work.

Their counsellors provide levels of encouragement and help that our Jobcentres around the country are simply not structured and equipped to provide.
As a result, Tomorrow’s People gets large numbers of people into jobs much more quickly, and at lower cost, than government schemes.
It’s yet another example of the voluntary sector succeeding where the state has faltered.

Fulfilling your potential without a decent education is increasingly difficult. Nearly a million children are receiving a sub-standard education in over 1,500 failing schools.
In some of our most deprived neighbourhoods, the scale of educational under-achievement is staggering.

Just before Christmas, I was in the Shankill Road area of Belfast, where I met local people involved in training young people who told me only 16 per cent of young people left school with any qualifications.
Without good education there can be no social justice.

In my first day as Conservative leader, I visited Eastside Young Leaders’ Academy in Newham.
It’s an inspirational project for black boys run by Ray Lewis, an ex-prison governor.
Headteachers refer boys headed for a life of crime to the Academy.

After school, at weekends and during the holidays, Eastside works intensively with the boys to raise their attainment and build their character. Ray’s not just steering them away from crime, he’s allowing them to reach for the stars. I want government to give heroes like Ray proper resources to transform young lives. Instead, we’re seeing the opposite happen today.

In another part of the East End that I visited this week, community leaders told me that one of the biggest problems they faced was the lack of opportunities for young people to do something positive and constructive out of school. And despite huge investment in their neighbourhood, youth clubs had closed down.
That’s crazy.
Working together, schools and community groups can give every child the start that they deserve in life.

Working Group on the Home and family:

More and more evidence shows that family breakdown causes poverty and poverty causes family breakdown. Our prisons are full of people whose homes broke up and they ended up in care.
The problems of substance abuse and poor educational achievement are rooted in the fact they never knew the constant love of a parent.
I have said that the tax and benefits system should encourage families to come together and stay together, and to support marriage.
I invite this group to examine how that might best be done.

I also hope the working group will examine the potential of relationship education in preventing family breakdown. No couple starts a relationship wanting it to fail. But many need help.

The average taxpayer now contributes at least £570 every year to the direct costs of family breakdown, but only 21p is spent on trying to save troubled relationships. Paltry sums are invested in helping couples build healthy relationships in the first place.

Harry Benson of Bristol Community Family Trust, who you saw in the film, runs superb relationship courses in ante-natal clinics, civil registrars and prisons.
Everyone should be given the best opportunities to form stable, healthy relationships and, especially where children are planned, to develop happy, healthy marriages.

.

But we all know that however much we do to help people forge paths out of poverty, some will be left behind. We must never say to those people – ‘You’ve had your chance and you must live with the wrong choices you made’.

I want to build a nation that never writes any one off.

A nation that says that it's never ever too late to start again.

Never too late to realise those dreams you once had.

For the mum who got pregnant as a teenager the nation of the second chance will enable her to study when she’s 35.

The nation of the second chance will offer rehab to the man who has frittered away his twenties addicted to drugs.

The nation of the second chance will find a warm home and a job for the man who has slept rough since he ran away from the father that abused him.

The nation of the second chance is a different world to Gordon Brown’s decommissioned Britain.

The nation of the second chance can only be realised if the voluntary sector gets reliable funding that doesn’t come with too much paperwork. Small community and voluntary groups who care for broken lives deserve financial support – the use of which isn’t micromanage by Gordon Brown’s huge army of bureaucrats.
The nation of the second chance will require each of us to pull our weight.

We will never fulfil our potential as a nation by giving up on our fellow citizens, abandoning them to long-term unemployment, educational failure or addiction.

Here, I don’t think that the voluntary sector has an important role to play. I believe that the voluntary sector has the crucial role to play. Iain Duncan Smith and I share that conviction.

We’ve both seen how the voluntary and social enterprise sectors provide intensive, long-term, holistic care to our vulnerable people. Above all, the care is personal.

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.

That is why the fifth Social Justice working group will look at building up the voluntary and community organisations that provide people with a second chance in life.
I invite the group to develop plans for ‘Social Enterprise Zones’ that will incentives social action where it’s most needed.

And we Conservatives don’t have to wait until we’re in government to make a difference.
We can start now.

I’ve proposed a National School Leaver programme and will be meeting leading voluntary groups to develop this idea next week.
Our national culture of volunteering must be revived.
I am determined that the Conservative Party should be at the heart of that revival.

At New Year, I invoked those famous words of Gandhi: "We must be the change we want to see in the world."

An increasing number of Conservative candidates are committing themselves not just to canvassing and leafleting but to helping transform communities.
In Brent recently I saw how Rishi Saha’s work for a community radio station has helped unleash the talents of young people in a deprived community.
Last summer in Warrington Fiona Bruce co-ordinated inmates from an open prison and high school pupils in giving a grubby ward a much-needed makeover.

Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, a former Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, and one time Political Director of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will chair the Group. The Deputy Chairman will be Lord King of Bridgwater, a former Conservative Defence Secretary and ex-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, who also served as Chairman of the Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee between 1994 and 2001.

Among the detailed issues to be examined will be terrorism, the rise of Islamic fundamentalism,
threats from failed and failing states, the proliferation of unconventional weapons, the nature of our open society, and the need to build community cohesion in an increasingly diverse culture.

The Group will also investigate the structure of policing in the UK, including reform designed to bring local policing closer to local populations and to provide a fully effective force or forces to deal with regional, national, and international policing challenges, including international terrorism. The effectiveness of border control, the security services, and administrative structures in Whitehall to deal with the threat of terrorist attack, will also be analysed.

As part of its work on security, the group will consider issues relating to social cohesion - including questions of community relations, immigration policy and their linkages with the UK’s foreign policy.

At the same time, the group will examine the UK’s geo-political positioning vis a vis the EU, NATO, relations with the USA and with Commonwealth Countries, as well as with less-developed countries and the emerging giants; and will also examine UK defence policy in the light of the current and emerging security challenges which the country faces.

Mr Cameron said: "The Conservative Party has always stood for the strong defence of our national security. We must respond to the security challenges of today and tomorrow, not twenty years ago. That means understanding and responding to the complex and interconnected security challenges that exist today.

"We need serious long-term thinking if we’re to formulate a response to these challenges, that protects our security while protecting the values of our liberal society. That is why we’re bringing together experts on international relations, security, defence and community cohesion to look at these problems in a coherent and connected way."

We must respond to the security challenges of today and tomorrow, not twenty years ago. That means understanding and responding to the complex and interconnected security challenges that exist today.

The Policy Group on Public Service Improvement will be addressing the long-term challenges facing the country. It will be jointly chaired by Baroness Perry, a former President of Lucy Cavendish College Cambridge, vice-chancellor of South Bank University, and Chief Inspector of Schools; and by Conservative MP Stephen Dorrell, who served as Health Secretary during the 1990s.

Commenting on the launch, Conservative Leader David Cameron said: "I’m delighted that Pauline Perry and Stephen Dorrell have agreed to chair our Policy Group on Public Service Improvement. There is not a single person in our country who won’t, at some point in their lives, have to rely on public services, and it’s our responsibility to develop the ideas that will improve public services for everyone."

Stressing the crucial importance of new ideas as well as new investment to drive forward an improvements agenda, Mr Cameron went on: "Money alone will not deliver the standards of healthcare, education and housing that people demand. I want the Conservative Party to lead the debate in this country about how we can improve public services. Our new policy group will play a key role, engaging with a wide range of people and organisations to develop exciting ideas for the future."

And he added: "Guided by our values – trusting people and sharing responsibility – I’m confident that the Conservative Party will become the party of public service improvement, with a message of change, optimism and hope for all those who use and work in our great public services."

Mr Cameron said the group’s remit was to examine all aspects of public service delivery in Britain. "It will investigate the means of improving the delivery of those services, and will look at the means of improving health and care outcomes, including through public health measures, health care services and personal social services, including long-term care."

He commented: "The group will consider the education of pre-school children and school-age students, focusing on the quality of outcome, the curriculum, the flexibility of provision and the adequacy of special needs provision (with help from the Special Needs Commission).

"The group will look also at the full range of local services. Throughout its consideration of issues relating to health, schools, housing and other local services, the group will investigate means of bringing local services closer to local people - and will investigate also the scope for a wide range of social enterprise to provide public services".

At a meeting with Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and a number of other leading environmental organisations, Conservative Party Leader, David Cameron announced a Policy Group on the Quality of Life. This special Quality of Life Policy Group has been launched by Conservative Leader David Cameron, as he prepares the ground for a fresh policy agenda on key issues including transport and housing, urban planning, the environment and countryside, and energy and climate change.

Former Environment Secretary John Gummer, who will be backed up by Zac Goldsmith, the environmental campaigner and editor of the Ecologist magazine, will chair the group.

Announcing the move during a visit to the London Wetland Centre in Barnes, Mr Cameron explained that the new body would investigate all aspects of the quality of life agenda, and he said: "We want to make sure we get these challenges right, and that means listening to the views of as many different people as possible."

The Conservative Leader declared: "I made clear throughout the leadership campaign that the environment and quality of life are central components of my political agenda. The importance of quality of life is one of the six biggest challenges we face, so I am delighted to announce that the Quality of Life Policy Group will be led by two of the most respected and charismatic figures in the green movement."

Pledging to put the environment at the heart of his policy programme, he rejected suggestions that he was deliberately delaying the formation of policy. Mr Cameron added: "The real test will come in 18 months time. We have got to have growth in the economy but we have got to make sure it is sustainable growth and it is green growth. The point of the policy review is to work out how we can deliver this."

Mr Cameron has also signalled that he wants to adopt a consensual approach, and is seeking to co-operate with both the Government and the Liberal Democrats on policies to tackle climate change. "We are not going to do this in a four to five year political time period. We need political parties to actually agree about some of the steps we have to make. Let’s try and agree some of the steps that are necessary to take this out of politics."

The aim of improving the economic efficiency, transparency, simplicity and fairness of the current tax system.

The Commission will examine the impact of recent developments in international tax policy, and developments in Britain’s tax system, on Britain’s ability to compete in the world. It will prepare a number of options for taxes that are simpler, flatter, and fairer. It will also examine the case for a flat tax. The Commission is expected to report by summer 2006.

Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, former Cabinet Minister and former deputy Chairman of JP MORGAN UK will chair the Tax Reform Commission. Other Commission members are Sir Christopher Gent (Chairman of GlaxoSmithKline), David Frost (Director General of British Chambers of Commerce), Graeme Leach (Chief Economist of the Institute of Directors), Stephen Machin (Senior Partner at KPMG), and Leonard Beighton (Low Incomes Tax Reform Group).

Commenting on the launch Mr Osborne said:

"In the last eight years, two hundred years of tax law has doubled. That is why I believe we need this Tax Reform Commission. Reforming a mature and complex tax system like ours will be no easy task. But as international competition accelerates, we must strive for a better tax regime, which boosts competitiveness for the country and opportunity for all."

"If Britain is to compete in the next century we need the will not just for lower taxes but for simpler, fairer and flatter taxes too. Only then can we bring long-term sustainable jobs and investment to this country.

Lord Forsyth added: "Our tax system has become hideously complex and some of our poorest people are paying the highest effective rates of tax on modest incomes. The commission has been given a challenging brief but it is one which is central to creating a fair, prosperous and competitive Britain.