Lib Dems set up group to lure Tory voters

The Liberal Democrats' attempts to replace the Tory party as the real opposition to the Government were underlined last night with the creation of a new group to lure Conservative voters.

Charles Kennedy, the Liberal Democrat leader, said the Peel Group would help to ensure that former Tory supporters felt welcome in his party.

The group is named after the 19th-century Conservative prime minister Sir Robert Peel, many of whose supporters later joined the Liberal Party. Its deployment is a swift response to the Tories' anti-Liberal Democrat unit set up at Central Office by Iain Duncan Smith to concentrate on constituencies that have become marginal in the past five years.

Mr Kennedy said he was delighted by the number of former Tories within the Liberal Democrat ranks. "Their values have not changed over the years but they recognise that it is now the Liberal Democrats and not the increasingly extreme Conservatives who represent their beliefs," he said.

"The Peel Group will play a valuable role in attracting more former Conservative supporters to our party and in making sure that they are welcome when they commit themselves to us."

A Liberal Democrat spokesman said the steering committee set up to establish the Peel Group, which will be made up of Liberal Democrat activists, will start work today.

Mark Oaten, chairman of the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party and convener of the steering committee, said millions of former Tory voters were disenchanted with the Conservative Party.

"The Conservatives have recognised the threat which the Liberal Democrats pose by setting up a unit in Central Office to monitor us. But units do not win votes. Neither do negative politics. The Peel Group will be working positively up and down the country to attract former Conservative supporters to Charles Kennedy's party," Mr Oaten said.

Tim Collins, the shadow Cabinet Office Minister, said: "It is the height of absurdity that a party on the hard left of the political spectrum should try to attract people from the Conservative Party."

The establishment of the Tory unit to combat the Liberal Democrats was announced at the Conservative Party conference last year.