London, England - The shadow education secretary, Tim Collins, today put faith schools at the centre of Tory plans to realign the country's moral compass.
Speaking at a prize-giving ceremony at St Ambrose college, Altrincham, greater Manchester, he said that a Conservative government would increase the number of faith schools to help put faith at the heart of the community.
"Faith schools - Catholic, Church of England, Jewish and Islamic alike - consistently offer higher academic standards and a stronger ethos than purely secular schools. They are more likely to provide clear moral guidance and are more insistent upon school uniform and effective discipline - and for all these reasons are far more likely to be oversubscribed by parents eager and indeed anxious to get their children in.
"The left believes faith has little or no place in schools... They want us to pursue sterile, soulless secularism at all costs.
"Yet the long-term consequences of the decades-long departure from faith and family are all too evident around us - broken homes, children without a moral compass, more drug usage, hundreds of thousands of abortions, feral scavenging youngsters preying on the old and vulnerable in their homes and on their streets."
The Tories' policy is to allow state support for faith schools so long as they accept Ofsted inspection, deliver the national curriculum and admit a minimum of 10% of pupils from other faith or no faith backgrounds.
The Labour party is supportive of faith schools where there is demand from parents for them, they are equitably funded with other state schools and they do not bar children on the basis of their religion.
The Liberal Democrats have been less supportive of faith schools, but today maintained that they did not advocate them being removed from the state system.
Phil Willis, Liberal Democrat education spokesman, said: "The Liberal Democrats are committed to providing all children with a quality local school and we recognize both the popularity and the success of many faith schools. We do not and have not advocated their removal from state funding."
Earlier this year the head of Ofsted, David Bell, was accused of Islamaphobia by prominent Muslim figures after he accused independent faith schools of threatening to undermine social cohesion.
David Bell's speech on citizenship at the Hansard society in January was met with a flurry of complaints after he warned that religious segregation in schools "must not put our coherence at risk".
He highlighted independent Muslim schools, which are growing in number most rapidly, and revealed excerpts from his forthcoming annual report which says that many Muslim schools must adapt their curriculum to help pupils "acquire an appreciation of and respect for other culture in a way that promotes tolerance and harmony".