Andrew Grice: Tories fear 'scorched earth' policy by Government

Conservatives worry there are many poison pills in the machine

On the face of it, another grim week for Gordon Brown. A U-turn on the part-privatisation of Royal Mail and a messy Commons defeat on his bill to "clean up" politics followed his climbdown on the Iraq inquiry. And he was outgunned on public spending by David Cameron at Prime Minister's Questions.

Yet appearances can be deceptive. Sometimes you have to clear the undergrowth in order to move forward. Mr Brown did not win rave reviews for his blueprint, Building Britain's Future. But there is more to it than just another document cobbled together for just another relaunch.

Labour strategists hope it will shape the long general election campaign that has now begun. Why? Because it is full of traps for Mr Cameron, before and after the election (if he wins). Will he deny people their new "entitlement" to an operation within 18 weeks of seeing their GP, or to see a specialist within two weeks if they have cancer?

By setting guaranteed minimum standards across public services, ministers hope to convince voters their money has gone to the front line, entrench their improvements, and tie Tory hands if they win by pre-empting how an incoming Cameron government would allocate its money. If the Tories oppose the new rights, Labour will portray them as being in the pockets of the producers (the staff) rather than the consumers.

The Tories insist they are not losing any sleep over what are discredited targets by another name. They don't think the new "entitlements" will be legally binding because, for example, it is difficult to see how a patient could sue the NHS.

However, Team Cameron is deeply worried that Labour is pursuing what one of his aides called a "scorched earth" policy in other areas. An incoming Tory government would hold a wide-ranging defence and national security review but senior Tories fear it could be pre-empted by defence contracts signed before the election. Ministers won't tell them what's going on. Similarly, the Tories fear ministers might approve huge IT contracts, for, among others, the police and the Flexible New Deal for the jobless, that might be virtually impossible to unstitch. The Tories are convinced they can save billions by switching from top-down super-computers to smaller but compatible networks.

The Opposition has pledged to scrap contracts for the identity cards scheme and hopes civil servants will try to stop Labour acting recklessly. But a government can govern until an election and Whitehall can't prejudge the result. "This is exercising our minds a lot," one senor Tory figure said. "Ministers won't give us any information about big contracts. It would be very irresponsible to rush things through knowing it was opposed by the main opposition party."

If the Tories win, incoming ministers could live with some of their inheritance. The Climate Change Act, forcing the Government to cut carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, would be retained. It was suggested by the Tories and Liberal Democrats and offers a model for a Cameron government. In the crucial area of fiscal policy, an independent Office for Budgetary Responsibility would assess the public finances and hold the Government's feet to the fire if they were unsustainable. (Labour toes would be pretty hot at the moment).

The rules of the game say that no government can bind its successor; legislation can be overturned if a new administration has a majority. Labour's Child Poverty Bill, aimed at eliminating child poverty by 2020, will be pushed through before the election. The Tories regard this as an aspiration and probably wouldn't bother to repeal it. Yet Labour's ability to attack them might be limited by its own failure to hit its interim target to halve child poverty by next year.

In some areas, public opinion would matter to a Cameron government more than money, penalty clauses, legal wrangles or legislative time. Take tax credits. It's a fair bet that the Tories would dismantle them, starting by cutting them for those on middle incomes. Labour ministers fear many beneficiaries don't understand the complex system, and that the outcry from the losers might be muted.

"We fear there will be a lot of poison pills in the machine," one senior Tory told me yesterday. The most toxic will probably be the true state of the nation's books. Shadow ministers think they would have two years to administer some pretty nasty medicine to the public and blame the spending cuts on Labour. After that, they might start to feel the heat.