Tories may offer a jobs pledge to win public services trust

The Conservatives might promise to safeguard the jobs of all doctors, nurses, teachers and police in an attempt to win the voters' trust on public services. Amid a growing row inside their party over whether it should offer tax cuts at the next general election, the Tories have commissioned private polling to test the popularity of a promise that no frontline jobs would be lost.

The questions for the YouGov internet poll, leaked to The Independent, provide an insight into the policy thinking of Iain Duncan Smith as he tries to mount a long-overdue fightback against Labour.

On the National Health Service, the Tories want to find whether the public will support a switch to "something like the German or French systems, where health provision is mainly private, but is paid for by a state-run insurance system". This is being seriously considered in the Tories' policy review.

Other possible pledges include giving tax breaks for private treatment, reducing the 200,000 NHS administrators to 100,000 and spending the money on more doctors and nurses.

The Opposition is also testing whether people would pay £5 to visit their GP, a move unlikely to be adopted because other Tory surveys found deep public hostility. Senior Tories fear the party is in a mess over tax and spending after sending conflicting messages in recent weeks. When Mr Duncan Smith became leader, he said public services should take priority over the party's long-standing pledge to reduce taxes, but last month promised tax cuts by reducing wasteful spending.

The U-turn has been opposed by Tory moderates, including Kenneth Clarke, a former chancellor, who fear it will enable Labour to portray the Tories as favouring deep cuts at a time when voters want better services.

The poll shows the Tories are searching hard for a way to "square the circle" and road-test possible commitments. One question asks whether voters would be more likely to support the party if it offered "lower taxes than Labour, and also pledged not to cut a single doctor, nurse, teacher, or police officer". An alternative policy is to say the Tories "would not have lower tax than Labour in the short term, but would in the long term".

The questions suggest the Tories might match Labour's spending on health and education but promise to spend "more carefully". They also test the credibility of a Tory pledge to cut a "culture of waste" in government.

In a YouGov poll for The Mail on Sunday, only one in five voters believed Mr Duncan Smith was performing well as Opposition leader.