DAVID CAMERON will today propose a powerful new independent body charged with requiring future governments to stick to agreed year-by-year reductions in carbon emissions.

The Shadow Education Secretary, who has been accused by his opponents in the Tory leadership race of being policy-light, will set out a radical new approach to tackling climate change by trying to take the politics out of it.

He wants a new monitoring body that would perform a role in measuring carbon emissions similar to that played by the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee in keeping to inflation targets using the weapon of interest rate adjustments.

Mr Cameron’s team has been stung by charges from the David Davis camp that he has thought little about the policy programme the party should be offering. Mr Davis over recent days has put out distinct policy stances on tax, pensions and grammar schools and is expected to set out more this week, in advance of their crucial head-to-head television debate on Thursday night.

A member of the Davis team said yesterday: “The Conservative Party is in danger of choosing a new leader on the basis of one speech. Politics is about substance as well as style. On the substance front Davis is making headway and aims to continue to do so.”

Mr Cameron retorted that it would be unwise to commit the party to a position on tax so far from the next election.

Today he will say he wants a programme on climate change designed for the next 50 years. “That requires a radically different approach — a change in how British politics has handled this issue up till now. We need to take the politics out of it: we need to constrain future governments in the face of the natural tendency to put short-term electoral considerations above the long-term interests of the country and the planet.”

Mr Davis yesterday said that he offered the party real policy rather than “spin”.

He insisted that the public did not want an “heir to Blair”, as Mr Cameron is alleged to have styled himself. Brushing aside a survey showing Mr Cameron with an overwhelming lead, he told Sky News: “You don’t measure the outcome of a race after the first furlong. What I want to do in the course of the next several weeks is to actually have a serious debate about taxes, about the sort of economy we want, about the public services we want, about the principles that we stand for.”

Mr Cameron was said to have described himself as the “heir to Blair”, Mr Davis said, but what the public wanted was “what you see is what you get” politics.

George Osborne, Shadow Chancellor and Mr Cameron’s campaign manager, called Mr Davis’s action in setting out detailed plans such as tax cuts a “misjudgment”.

Speaking on BBC’s Politics Show, he said: “It’s much better to set a broad direction at this stage, which is for lower, simpler, flatter taxes if necessary.

“Then people know the direction you are travelling in, but you are not actually writing Budgets five years before they have to be delivered.”

WEEKEND WORDS

“The Conservative party is in danger of choosing a new leader on the basis of one speech. Politics is about substance as well as style” THE DAVIS CAMP

“It’s much better to set a broad direction at this stage, which is for lower, simpler, flatter taxes if necessary. Then people know the direction you are travelling in” GEORGE OSBORNE, CAMERON’S CAMPAIGN MANAGER

“You don’t measure the outcome of a race after the first furlong” DAVID DAVIS

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