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| Daily Telegraph, by George Jones, 14 December 2005 |
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| DAVID Cameron signalled yesterday that he wanted to adopt a more moderate approach to immigration by appointing Damian Green, a leading moderniser, as the party's spokesman on the issue. |
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| At the last general election the Conservatives highlighted "controlled immigration'' as one of their six key election manifesto pledges. But the new Tory leader believes the emphasis on immigration helped to reinforce the impression that the party was harsh and negative. |
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| A spokesman for Mr Cameron said immigration was a "sensitive issue'' on which it was important to get "the right tone''. |
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| Mr Green, MP for Ashford, was a leading member of the campaign team around David Davis, the defeated candidate in the leadership election. |
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| He is a leading moderniser on the Left of the party, who served in Iain Duncan Smith's shadow cabinet. He was dropped as shadow transport secretary by Michael Howard in a 2004 reshuffle, which shifted the front-bench team to the Right. |
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| Mr Green was seen as a potential long-shot challenger for the leadership after Mr Howard announced he was stepping down. |
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| In 47 middle-ranking and junior appointments to the front-bench team announced yesterday, Mr Cameron sought to promote members of the "thirtysomething'' new intake of Conservative MPs. |
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| Michael Gove, 38, was named as the party's housing spokesman. A former journalist, he won the safe Tory seat of Surrey Heath in May. Within weeks he was working at the heart of Mr Cameron's campaign for the Conservative leadership, coaching him in how to deal with the media. |
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| Mark Harper, 35, (Forest of Dean) becomes a defence spokesman, Jeremy Hunt, 37, (Surrey SW) spokesman for disabled people, and Tobias Ellwood, 39, (Bournemouth E) becomes a whip. |
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| Andrew Mackay, the MP for Bracknell, and another of Mr Davis's backers, has been appointed as senior parliamentary and political adviser to Mr Cameron, charged with detecting potential political pitfalls. |
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| Newcomers to the shadow ministerial team include the former whip David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds), who gained a reputation as a tenacious inquisitor of Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, on the cross-party Commons Treasury select committee. He becomes a work and pensions spokesman. |
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| Another former whip, Mark Prisk (Hertford and Stortford), returns to the shadow ministerial team as small business spokesman. |
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| Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) becomes a transport spokesman and Maria Miller (Basingstoke), elected to Parliament for the first time in May, becomes an education spokesman. |
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| Patrick Mercer continues as spokesman on homeland security and Ann McIntosh becomes a spokesman on work and pensions. |
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| Mr Cameron held his first shadow cabinet meeting in Birmingham yesterday as a signal of his intention to "connect with the whole country''. Today, he will go to the City of London to deliver his first speech on the economy. |
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| Joan Blaney, the director of Birmingham's Community Education and Training Academy, which helps people in disadvantaged communities find jobs, briefed the Tories on social action issues. |
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| Speaking afterwards, Mr Cameron said: "We only revive the Conservative Party in the inner cities if we show we have the best ideas for urban revival and regeneration.'' |
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