Ideas: Fox

The Conservatives have announced a series of policy initiatives in a bid to recapture the domestic agenda.

At the party's spring forum in Harrogate senior frontbenchers challenged Labour's progress since 1997 and set out new strategies for health and crime policies.

Shadow health minister Dr Liam Fox announced plans for a "patient's passport" that would allow people to move between the NHS and private healthcare providers.

"Unless there is fundamental and radical reform, the NHS will never produce the quality of care we have a right to expect in the world's fourth largest economy," he told party members.

Under the passport scheme, NHS patients would be allowed to take a proportion of the NHS tariff with them if they decide to have treatment outside the NHS.

"This freedom is essential if we are to see greater plurality and diversity in both the funding and provision of healthcare that we seek. We intend to move away from the state monopoly with its increasing centralising targets and standardisation of supply."

"We believe that the NHS is there to service the patients not vice versa," he added.

His colleague Oliver Letwin set out plans to tackle crime by putting 40,000 extra police officers on the beat.

The shadow home secretary also said that his plans to massively overhaul the asylum system would bring a cost saving that would fund new police "in every parish and neighbourhood across Britain".

Letwin said the extra police were needed to help communities that were in "retreat from civilisation".