With the polls predicting a Conservative victory David Willetts has said that the Tories must begin to make detailed plans for governing.
As David Cameron's party prepare for their annual conference at the end of the month, Willetts said that with the government in the doldrums it was an "exciting time" to be in the shadow cabinet.
In an interview with ePolitix.com the shadow universities secretary said: "Without getting complacent at all, as we get closer to the election, people want to know what we would do in government.
"It is very exciting being in the shadow cabinet and having been in the shadow cabinet for so long I can say there is now more interest in what our policies are than I can remember in the 10 years I've been here; that's fantastic.
"People will want to see more about how we would tackle Britain's problems and there will be a strong sense at the party conference of the practical policy agenda. There will also be the themes of a stronger society, of a flexible economy that hold it together as David Cameron has set out very carefully."
Willetts emphasised that the Tories were not being complacent about winning power but that as a former civil servant himself he knew opposition parties must be ready to govern.
"By having a 'preparing for government' session at conference we are not presuming anything, we are merely saying that if we are in government after the next election then one of our crucial responsibilities is to arrive properly prepared.
"In 1979 when the Conservatives arrived I was a civil servant in the Treasury and the civil service made a serious mistake in not taking the Thatcher agenda seriously.
"It took them several years to realise that this had been properly thought-out and it was an agenda for rescuing the sick man of Europe.
"In 1997, the paradox was that the civil service had learned the lesson of 1979 and was ready to be deployed and yet the Blair government didn't trust them, hadn't really prepared anything in opposition, weren't ready to work with the Whitehall machine and, as Blair subsequently admitted, they wasted a lot of their first term."
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