Tories: £14bn war on red tape is not lurch to Right

The Tories rejected claims that they were lurching to the Right today as they vowed to take on Brussels and slash £14billion in business red tape.

Shadow chancellor George Osborne said a Tory government would "pick a fightî with the EU and pull out of a swathe of treaties harming British firms.

He spoke out as economic policy chief John Redwood told the Standard his radical programme of cuts in regulation should not be caricatured as a shift away from the centre ground.

"I have no wish for the Conservative party to lurch to the Right, or to lurch in any other direction. I voted for David Cameron to modernise the Tories because I too wish to belong to a 21st-century-party which thinks of the future, not the past," he said.

But Mr Redwood made plain that his plans, to be published this Friday, were not based on focus groups or "triangulation" - Tony Blair's favoured means of trying to please all of the votersall of the time.

In a move that could anger environmentalists, the former Cabinet minister said Britain was "running outî of roads and airport space.

"We must double our motorway network to match France and Germany," he said, adding that it was not green to force motorists to pump out more CO2 by keeping them in traffic jams.

Airport capacity shortages meant long-haul flights were diverted to Amsterdam from London, adding to carbon emissions, he told the Daily Telegraph. His report will call for planning breaks for new nuclear power plants.

Among the other proposals are: the axing of specialist regulators for gas, electricity, water, telecoms and post services; the break-up of BAA's airports monopoly and a review of healthand-safety laws.

They also include: a repeal of EU rules which limit the number of hours a week employees can work; moves to make it easier for bosses to sack staff and the scrapping of laws on data protection, pensions regulation and financial services.

Mr Redwood claims savings could add up to £14billion of "tax cuts in all but name" for business by the end of the Tories' first parliament.

• The report will also cast doubt on Mr Cameron's focus on renewable energy sources, such as wind, solar and tidal, the Daily Mail has learned.

'Looking at the figures it seems quite clear that, in the short term, we are unlikely to derive a majority of our power from such sources,' it will say. The report will call for planning breaks for operators to build new nuclear plants on the sites of existing stations.