Politicians must be positive if they are to appeal to young people, the Tories' youth spokesman said on Tuesday.

Interviewed by this website, Charles Hendry says that politicians are failing to engage with an entire generation of young voters.

"The big difference that we have to face is that more young people voted in Big Brother and in Pop Idol, than in the general election last year," he said.

"So we have to learn some lessons from that. We can't make, obviously, direct comparisons because they are different subjects. But politics is not sufficiently positive, and I think young people are extremely positive in the approach they take to life."

Hendry, appointed to promote youth issues on the opposition frontbench, dismisses claims that the under-30s are not interested in major policy issues.

"They are certainly interested in issues, even if they're not interested in politics," he said.

"I think therefore we have to talk rather more about the issues which they're concerned about, from the environment, to transport, to their safety on the streets at night, to international matters, and to show that we have solutions to those issues, rather than what they see at the moment, which is a lot of middle-aged men shouting at each other."

The youth spokesman also revealed that his party is to target young voters with a massive email and mailshot campaign over coming months.

He says the party has established a "massive email database" to contact over 4000 youth organisations.

First time voters will also receive a birthday mailshot when they turn 18.

"What we're hoping is that when someone turns 18, they will have a survey form from one of their local Conservative representatives, and that will just start a dialogue that we're very, very determined to continue," said Hendry.

But he dismissed suggestions that Iain Duncan Smith lacks the qualities required to woo young voters back to the Tory fold.

"At the end of the day we will go to go into the next election with a raft of policies which we think reflect the aspirations of young people and which try to deal with the fears that they may have," he said.

"Young people are very entrepreneurial and so we're going to be looking for ideas as to how we stimulate that."

Hendry said the Conservatives were now intent on "building bridges with an enormous range of organisations" involved in youth issues.

"Over the last few months, I've been running a regular brainstorming on Tuesdays where we just brought in a whole range of organisations, who very probably have never had structured contact with the Conservative Party before," he said.

"A lot of those are organisations like CentrePoint, like the YMCA dealing with very disadvantaged people, homeless people and that we're really keen to involve them in our process of policy development."

On issues such as homosexuality he insists his party is changing its attitude.

"What we are now doing is showing that we do reflect the aspirations, the views, the way of life of people in general," he said.

"And I think people are going to look again and see that the Tory party is very different from the one they thought it was. Once they've done that, they'll look at the ideas that we're putting forward."

Hendry also says his party will listen to the views of young voters on issues such as drugs and section 28.

"One of the things that we will be doing, both in the survey form, which is going out to 18 year-olds, and also in some of the questions we will be asking in the email system, is asking for people's views on drugs," said the MP.

"Although the anecdotal evidence is that many young people have taken drugs, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are in favour of decriminalisation.

"At the end of the day, we're not saying, we undertake to take on board every idea that people put to us, but at least if we then explain that we have a different position, then people will understand why we have come to that conclusion."

But the party is cool about suggestions to lower the voting age to 16, said Hendry.

"I think our energies should be focusing at this stage on how we get the 60 per cent of first time voters who didn't vote to vote, rather than looking at bringing in more people to vote before we've dealt with that issue," he said.