DAVID CAMERON acknowledged yesterday that restoring public faith in the Conservatives’ ability to run the economy was the key to his party’s recovery.

In what amounted to a frank admission of his own and his party’s vulnerability on the issue, Mr Cameron vowed that the Tories would never again make the mistakes that led to repossessions, negative equity and the disaster of Black Wednesday, when Britain fell out of the European exchange-rate mechanism.

Mr Cameron, who was at the time a special adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Lamont of Lerwick, said that the Conservatives had learnt the lessons of the past. Mr Cameron knows that Labour intends to exploit that he was a government adviser at probably the worst time in the party’s modern history.

He announced a new economic framework designed to put what he called a “triple lock” on economic stability.

He promised that the Conservatives would not interfere with Labour’s decision to make the Bank of England independent or ever hand over its power to set interest rates to the European Central Bank by joining the euro. He said that he would back Gordon Brown’s plan to make the Office for National Statistics independent and, in a new move, said that he would be bringing in independent arbitation of the Treasury’s “golden rule”, under which the books must balance over the economic cycle.

Mr Cameron, in his first big speech on the economy, was addressing business leaders in London. In the clearest admission of his own sensitivity on the issue, he said: “Six hundred and ninety Wednesdays ago my party lost its reputation for economic competence. I was there that day, working in the Treasury. You may have seen the TV footage.”

Mr Cameron said that the proposals, which formed part of the Tory manifesto for last May’s general election, would “take the politics, and the politicians, out of the crucial economic judgments that affect the long-term stability of our economy”.

“Our approach will create the foundations for low inflation, low interest rates, high employment, and high and sustainable income growth,” he said.

“This approach shows that we have learnt the lessons of the past. We’ll never again put your home, your business, your future at risk by undermining economic stability.”

Mr Cameron said that he supported Bank of England independence, granted by Gordon Brown in 1997, and would never allow it to be “tarnished by political interference”. The Conservatives were the only party that had pledged to maintain that independence by staying out of the euro. He welcomed Mr Brown’s announcement last month that the Office for National Statistics was to be made independent.

But he questioned who would appoint the national statistician and the external members of his governing board, and what the extent of their powers would be to prepare figures on contentious issues such as PFI.

An independent Fiscal Projections Committee reporting to Parliament twice a year would restore the public credibility of the Treasury’s fiscal rules, battered by Mr Brown’s recent announcement of a change in the timing of the economic cycle, said Mr Cameron. The Tory leader insisted that it was the previous Tory administration’s introduction of inflation targeting and the independent inflation report in 1992, which provided Mr Brown with a “golden economic inheritance ” in 1997 and laid the groundwork for 13 years of continuous growth.

“We need to establish a clear and credible framework for macroeconomic policy and economic stability,” he said. “We need to show we have learnt from the past in order to give people confidence about the future.”

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