Willetts plugs ‘compassionate conservatism’
‘Compassionate conservatism’ will make a headline comeback today as Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary David Willetts makes a keynote speech.
In his address to the Centre for Social Justice later on Thursday, Mr Willetts is expected to focus strongly on plans to tackle poverty.
One key announcement is likely to be a promise of an amnesty to all families that have been over paid by the Inland Revenue on their Child Tax Credit.
Currently such families have to return any over-payment, but Mr Willetts will announce that such families can keep the extra money.
He will say: “The most urgent problem bringing much financial distress to families today is the process whereby the Inland Revenue is reclaiming supposed overpayments of Child Tax Credits….I can announce today that it is Conservative policy to offer an amnesty to families in respect of their Child Tax Credit in 2003/04 unless the overpayment was caused by fraud on the part of the claimant.”
Turning more to principles, in which he will stress that the Conservatives are not just a party of business and the well off, Mr Willetts will say: “It is easy to have a neat dualism between head and heart, efficiency and compassion, or Conservative and Labour. That was how politics appeared in the 1980s: efficient but heartless versus useless but well-intentioned. It is not like that any more.
“The essential part of Blair’s Third Way was to claim that Labour didn’t just stand for fairness but also for economic efficiency. Similarly, it is essential for the renewal of Conservatism that we are not just the party that celebrates enterprise and economic success but also understand that we have obligations to the most vulnerable members of society.”
In terms of the Tory approach, he will outline three core principles, saying: “First, we recognise the obvious point that one of the most important aspects of poverty is that people don’t have enough money. We have to offer financial security. But money isn’t the whole story. Values matter too. As Irving Kristol puts it, ‘It’s hard to rise above poverty if society keeps deriding the human qualities that allow you to escape from it.’ That is why, secondly, we need to strengthen society by reinforcing decent values. Thirdly, there is our progressive agenda for spreading ownership and choice more widely than ever before in our history.”
Also likely to feature highly in the speech are previous Conservative announcements on pensions and childcare.
