Tory volunteers repairing latrines in a school for Rwandan orphans rejected claims yesterday that the project to be visited by David Cameron this weekend is a public relations stunt that will, in any case, fail to win over voters.

Six Tory MPs are among about 40 Conservative volunteers that have started working on development projects in the African state in what the party claims is the first such effort by a British political party. Showing off the reconstruction of an infant school, Andrew Mitchell, the Shadow Secretary for International Development, rounded on critics who said it would do little to convince voters the party shared their concerns.

“This issue is central to the Conservative Party and to British politics. Our generation is the first generation that is going to make an enormous difference to this huge discrepancy of wealth that exists between the rich and the poor world which is obscene.”

Mr Mitchell was speaking after Lord Tebbit told The Times that he doubted that the Rwanda project would stir people to vote for the party at the next general election. “It is difficult to see people leaping up from Coronation Street and saying, ‘I must vote Tory to give some more subsidies to the good people of Africa’!”

Mr Cameron, however, defended the initiative. It includes a surgical clinic, classes for deaf children and football and cricket coaching. “Conservative volunteers are working on a range of projects whose aim is making a real difference and leaving a legacy.” The Tory leader has also rejected criticism over his own flying visit to the state, infamous for the 1994 genocide in which a million people were killed in ten days.

“The problem is there’s such cynicism about politics that you try to do some of these things and you get a bucket of, whatever, poured over your head,” added Mr Cameron.

The Tory leader — mindful of appearances — is staying in a Christian mission built and run by survivors of the genocide rather than the luxury hotel in which the media and some party staff are being accommodated. Other volunteers are being housed in four flats in a block of social housing near the city centre. Mr Cameron will address the Rwandan parliament on Monday where he is expected to respond to the publication of the final report by the party’s Globalisation and Global Poverty Policy Group, which is expected to recommend that the party matches Labour’s commitment on aid.

Although he is expected to participate in one of the projects, aides insist that it will be “off-camera”.

Those participating include Tobias Ellwood, MP for Bournemouth East, who rejected the claim that there were few votes for the Tories in Kigali, the Rwandan capital that is the scene of all but a handful of the 20 projects. “If that was the reason we were here then it would be the wrong reason. That’s not why I came into politics.”

His fellow workmate on the £10,000 rebuilding of the Giribuntu, School, Brooks Newmark, MP for Braintree, said: “I am sure that there will be people in my constituency who think I should be at home, but poverty affects us all, be it through disease or terrorism.”

Mr Newmark, who spent two decades in the City, says he is revelling in leading a very different life as he helps to refurbish the school for about 80 children aged between 3 and 7, most of whose parents have died of Aids or whose family was impoverished in the genocide.

Annette Muganga, one of about 50 Rwandan volunteers who have rallied to the side of the Tories said that the locals had been shocked initially at the sight of British parliamentarians repairing latrines and mending walls. “It has been impressive how these big men have lowered themselves working with humbler men.”

While charities such as VSO are publicly supportive, some aid workers voiced concerns privately that the Conservative effort displays a colonial mindset.

Times Recommends

• Olympic-size television coming to your town
• Mosley opens new front in battle for privacy
• Decorator fined for smoking in van