Maude and Willetts lose out in Cameron's reshuffle

David Cameron has sought to quell criticism of his leadership of the Conservative Party with a shake-up of his Shadow Cabinet which saw promotions for outsiders, women and rising stars.

The Tory leader dismissed calls by traditionalists for a change of direction as he announced a reshuffle designed to improve the performance of his frontbench team.

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The losers include Francis Maude, the party chairman and a leading moderniser, who is demoted to shadowing the Cabinet Office, and David Willetts, who sparked an internal row by abandoning the Tories' support for creating more grammar schools. He loses his schools brief but will continue to speak for the party on higher education.

Hugo Swire, who suggested the Tories might re-introduce museum charges before being slapped down by Mr Cameron, pays the price for his gaffe by losing his job as shadow Culture Secretary. He is likely to become a junior defence spokesman. The new faces include Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, the former chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee, who becomes the Tories' spokesman on security and Mr Cameron's personal adviser on national security. She will become a life peer.

Sayeeda Warsi, 36, who will also receive a peerage, becomes shadow minister for Community Cohesion, the first Muslim to hold such a senior post in the Conservative Party. The two appointments mirror Gordon Brown's decision to bring in outside experts.

Addressing Labour MPs for the first time since becoming Prime Minister, Mr Brown accused the Tories of "flip-flopping" on air travel taxes, married couples' allowance and grammar schools. He received a rapturous response after saying the Tories' default position was "going to the right" and that they had not undergone the same "reconstruction" as Labour.

Caroline Spelman, formerly local government spokeswoman, takes over as Tory chairman and will play a key role as the public face of the party. Mr Cameron hopes the team he announced will remain in place until the general election.

There are promotions for three MPs who entered the the Commons in 2005. Nick Herbert becomes shadow Justice Secretary, Michael Gove is the new shadow Schools and Children Secretary and Jeremy Hunt is shadow Culture Secretary.

Mr Cameron rebuffed calls for change at the top by keeping George Osborne, William Hague and David Davis as his shadow Chancellor, Foreign and Home Secretary respectively. He also resisted right-wing pressure to oust Oliver Letwin as the head of the party's wholesale policy review. Mr Osborne also lands the key role of general election co-ordinator.

The Tory leader said: "These changes strengthen the Shadow Cabinet team ... Two of the big challenges facing this country today are security and community cohesion and we now have two leading experts in these fields in Dame Pauline Neville-Jones and Sayeeda Warsi."

Mr Cameron hopes the reshuffle will enable him to get back on track after a difficult month in which traditionalists exploited the grammar schools row to question his modernising project. But there were further signs of unease when Ann Winterton, a right-wing Tory MP, said the party's grass roots were "baffled" by Mr Cameron's reforms. She expressed fears that he lacked experience and was neglecting older voters.

She told Parliamentary Monitor magazine she was "very concerned" about the present leadership team and warned there had been a "great outpouring of grief" over its recent renunciation of grammar schools.

Newcomers to the Shadow Cabinet

* DAME PAULINE NEVILLE-JONES, 68, becomes spokesman for security. She is a career diplomat who chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee in 1993-94. She was critical of the Blair government's use of intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. She once said the head of JIC needed to be "someone who can go and tell the Prime Minister 'The facts don't fit'." Educated at Leeds Girls' High School and Oxford where she read modern history, she entered the diplomatic service in 1963 and over 33 years served in Rhodesia, Singapore, Washington and Bonn. She was a BBC governor from 1998 to 2004 and was chairman of QinetiQ, the privatised defence company.

* SAYEEDA WARSI, 36, will become one of the youngest peers in the Lords, as shadow minister for community cohesion. She is the first Muslim Conservative to reach such a high position. A solicitor who is fluent in Punjabi, Urdu and Gujarati, she has worked in Pakistan on a research project on forced marriages. She was an active Tory student at Leeds and launched Operation Black Vote in West Yorkshire. She failed to win a seat in 2005. Born in Dewsbury, she went to school locally and read law at the University of Leeds before training with the Crown Prosecution Service and the Home Office. She worked for the former MP for Dewsbury before setting up her own practice.

* CAROLINE SPELMAN, 49, will replace Francis Maude as chairman of the party. Her task will be to go on the "rubber chicken" circuit to revive Tory morale, but also to sharpen the Tory attack before the next election. As shadow local government secretary, she has led the Tory attack on the Government over rising council tax bills, changes in planning that could lead to more gardens being used for housing, claims of "snoopers" checking on property values, and Home Information Packs. She has held her Meriden seat since 1997 and has a comfortable majority over Labour, with the Liberal Democrats third.

* MICHAEL GOVE, 39, will shadow Ed Balls as spokesman for Children, Schools and Families. A Times journalist who was brought up in Aberdeen, he is regarded as a hard-hitting broadcaster for the Tories. A regular panelist on Question Time and The Moral Maze on BBC Radio 4, he won a seat for Surrey Heath in 2005 and helped to mount a successful Tory attack as shadow housing minister on Home Information Packs. Seen as a right winger on defence and law and order but a liberal on social issues, he is expected to reassure traditionalists in his party that the Tories are not in favour of abolishing grammar schools.