Last week, the Prime Minister finally accepted "full responsibility" for his role in the banking failures, while the Leader of the Opposition was busy detailing a 'progressive' agenda for change. This is a Conservatism born of economic and social reality.With national debt over £100 billion higher than the Government predicted even last year - over £4,500 for every family - people in Britain will be paying for the Government's management of the economy long after it has gone.

We have a moral obligation not to leave our children saddled with the debts of our generation. In the short-term, reduction of these arrears is essential to our economic recovery. Conservatives will reign in the massive excess of Government waste.

Spending on public sector salaries has ballooned since 1997. Where this has gone to essential frontline services like nurses, doctors, teachers and police it is money well spent. But salaries and bounuses for bureaucrats have soared, with the Chief Executive of OFCOM earning £417,581 last year, more than double that paid to the Prime Minister.

A progressive new approach is needed to end the culture of quango fat cats and wasteful state spending. But this is not to say the state doesn't have role, or that during a recession plans for social reform should be shelved.

Our battered economy cannot continue to shoulder the burden of massive welfare dependency and we cannot go on ignoring the problem of family breakdown when it causes so much misery and costs the state billions of pounds every year.

A progressive Conservative fiscal strategy will address the debt crisis and move forward with our plans for social reform to reduce the long-term demands on the state and to deliver control of public spending in the short term as well.