Tories: 'trust us, we're the true party of the poor

The Tories will make an audacious attempt this week to present themselves as the party of the poor, with a tax cutting package expected to help the low-paid.

David Cameron, the shadow cabinet minister in charge of the election manifesto, said tax levels were now 'absolutely holding back' the least well-off.

'Families and individuals are being held back by the level of taxation in this country. Take the fact that the poorest 20 per cent of this country actually got poorer last year, the fact that average incomes didn't go up last year - opportunity is now being restricted by an over-mighty government,' he said.

Good state education, clean hospitals or more police on the streets 'matter most to the people in this country who have the least', he added. 'If you are very rich you can buy your way out of bad education and put a security guard at the end of your street.'

His words will be seen as a strong signal that the £4 billion tax cutting package to be unveiled in the Tories' manifesto this week will include generous cuts for the low-paid, as well as for the Conservatives' traditional middle-class supporters. Cuts would be aimed at where tax 'pinched hardest', he said.

However they will outrage ministers, who argue Tory policies of subsidising private education and private healthcare for those who can afford it through their pupil and patient passports would affect precisely the least well off.

Asked if he considered himself personally overtaxed on an MP's salary, Cameron declined to answer, saying he thought 'hardworking families at all income levels' had been hit by extra taxes. But he said he sympathised with the so-called middle-class poor, professionals who claim to be crippled by the cost of mortgage, childcare and all the trappings of a middle-class lifestyle.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Observer, Cameron also defended the right-wing populist nature of his party's campaign.

'Politics is about talking about the things people care about. We have been totally focussed on the issues people care about and I would make absolutely no apology for that,' he said.

'When people say "isn't this populist" or "aren't you appealing to people's fears" - when [Rudy] Giuliani [the former New York mayor] cleared the streets of crime, was that a policy about hope, or a policy about fear? To me that was a policy about hope.'

The manifesto will also include more mainstream measures, such as a belated response to Jamie Oliver's campaign on school dinners. Schools, hospitals and other public services will be required to buy food meeting the Little Red Tractor scheme kitemark, representing minimum standards of animal welfare.

The rise of Cameron reflects the growing influence of a group of young modernisers nicknamed the 'Notting Hill Tories' - he hates the tag, insisting his west London home is not even in this gilded area 'unless I was getting an estate agent to sell it'.

As a key architect of Howard's campaign, he is aware of the electoral mountain the party has to climb. It needs to be at least 10 points ahead in the polls before it could win thanks to the relatively large size of more rural Tory seats. He does not, he says, favour proportional representation but wants the odds evened out: 'The most important thing would be to have constituencies the same size.'