Tory MPs to get a taste of real world in public services

They are underfunded, unloved and under pressure. But just when our clapped-out public services thought it could not get any worse, they now face an army of Tory MPs offering to work for free.

Under plans drawn up by Francis Maude, the former shadow foreign secretary and founder of a new Tory think-tank, all 166 Conservative MPs would undertake work placements in schools and hospitals.

Mr Maude said such voluntary help would allow frontbench and backbench MPs to get away from Westminster and in touch with the daily experiences of the public.

Each placement would last a minimum of two years and involve MPs spending a few hours a week as classroom assistants or hospital porters, or even special constables.

In an interview with the political website ePolitix.com, Mr Maude said that while Iain Duncan Smith, the Tory leader, was right to place a new emphasis on public services, "the sad truth is that we have low credibility'' on the issue.

"I would like to see senior politicians, and it's no good this being done as a sort of publicity stunt, spending the next two years really immersing themselves, and actually not just senior politicians,'' Mr Maude said. "I mean right through the parliamentary party en masse, immersing ourselves in the health service, in the way state schools are run, living it, breathing it, feeling it, touching it.

"I think there are huge benefits in this. You know, going out with the police, but not doing it as a sort of one-off, done-that, ticked-that-box, but really living and breathing it.

"We need to speak about these issues from a position of obvious knowledge and commitment, so that our proposals don't appear to flow from dogma or ideology, but from real immediate knowledge of what needs to be done.''

Mr Maude also urged Mr Duncan Smith to change the party's stance on homosexuality, immigration, race and candidate selection. "We need to be rather more than just tolerant," he said. "You have to be genuinely respectful of people, regardless of which side of the tracks they are born, colour, gender, race, sexual orientation and so on.'' He said Central Office should intervene directly in constituency selection procedures to ensure that more women and members of ethnic minority groups were chosen so that "we have a bench of candidates at the next election, right through the field, which is representative''.

With the Tories in third place behind Labour and the Liberal Democrats among the 25-34 age group, Mr Maude warned that the party faced "terminal decline'' unless it could engage with younger voters. He suggested that his colleagues could learn from the Ali G television character. "People like Ali G say 'talk to the hand cos the face ain't listening', and you've got to get people listening again. So surprising people by being less like politicians would be a good first step," Mr Maude said.