David Cameron has called for a revolution in personal responsibility to halt social decline and promised that a Conservative government would not treat people like children.

The Conservative leader claimed that Labour’s addiction to government intervention in every social problem was creating a less civilised society. He said that voters must take responsibility for themselves and not expect the State always to intervene.

Labour retorted that Mr Cameron had no idea what it was like to be plagued by crime and antisocial behaviour, while the Liberal Democrats urged him to develop hard policies.

Sketching out what he insisted was a new political battle-ground, Mr Cameron told the Royal Society of Arts in London: “I want people to understand that the next Conservative government is not going to treat its citizens like children. It’s not going to do everything for them, promise to solve every problem, respond to every incident, accident or report with a new initiative, regulation or law.”

He argued that people had become resigned to social decline, pointing to the increases in attacks on NHS staff, shop workers and bus drivers. “All these are sad signs of a culture that is becoming decivilised — and the terrible thing is, we’re getting used to it,” he said. “We have come to assume — and to resign ourselves to the fact — that civility is on a permanent and inevitable downward slide.” He blamed an increasingly centralised social policy — the responsibility of Margaret Thatcher as well as Tony Blair — for creating an “irresponsible society”.

“Now, of course, government needs to act in response to urgent social problems and individually each one of its actions may seem helpful. But collectively they add up to a growing burden of state intervention that simply creates a more irresponsible society.”

Mr Cameron said it was up to government to create a framework of incentives for people to act in a more socially minded way. That would prove more effective than regulations and laws. Families must be strengthened, local institutions given more power to encourage responsibility, and councils granted greater control over spending in their area.

He also attacked the media for encouraging irresponsible behaviour through endless depictions of “violence, aggression, sex, vulgarity and shallowness”, and demanding that the state was the answer to every problem. But Mr Cameron said: “We are witnessing a decline in social responsibility caused in large part by the state taking more and more responsibility away from people.”

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, accused Mr Cameron of “wittering on”. “Actions speak louder than words. Until David Cameron is prepared to put flesh on his soft-soap rhetoric about trusting communities it will be difficult to take him seriously,” he said. “Waxing lyrical about community autonomy is vacuous in the absence of any substantial proposals from the Tories to devolve money-raising powers to our local communities.”

Tony McNulty, a Home Office Minister, tried to outflank the Conservatives, declaring: “David Cameron simply does not get what it means to be plagued by crime and antisocial behaviour and Labour will continue to support communities in their fight to feel safer in their own streets. We will take no lessons from David Cameron and his ‘hug a hoodie’ Tories about how best to empower people to tackle crime and antisocial behaviour.”

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