Parties rush to embrace the new moral crusade

Political leaders competed with each other to embrace the new moral agenda put forward by Frances Lawrence, the widow of the murdered headteacher, Philip Lawrence.

Mrs Lawrence's campaign for a change of moral climate in Britain looked certain to dominate the opening of the final session of Parliament tomorrow with the Queen's Speech listing a range of Bills, including the Gun Control Bill, introduced in the wake of the Dunblane massacre last March in which 16 schoolchildren and a teacher were shot dead.

John Major, Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown united in welcoming the social agenda put forward by Mrs Lawrence to deal with law and order, education and "civic responsibility".

Doors around Whitehall were being thrown open to Mrs Lawrence, who in recent days has met the Prime Minister and discussed her campaign with Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, and Gillian Shephard, Secretary of State for Education.

Last night Mr Howard floated the idea of an annual good citizenship award for young people, established in memory of Mr Lawrence to "ensure that his example lives on".

The Labour leader said he was "excited" by her campaign to recruit parents and politicians to begin primary school lessons in good citizenship, restore family families, and stop children seeking "refuge in the harsh, unfamiliar and tenuous camaraderie of the streets".

"She has done a real service to the country," Mr Blair said. "She is saying there is something fundamentally wrong with the society in which we live and we have to decide as a society what are our moral values upon which we want to rebuild Britain as a decent civic society for today's world."

Some Shadow Cabinet members were seeking meetings with Mrs Lawrence to discuss their plans and her ideas. David Blunkett, Labour's education spokesman, made it clear that he favoured citizenship being included in the national curriculum and teachers' status being raised to that of other professions.

Not to be outdone, Mrs Shephard said she had given an undertaking to Mrs Lawrence in private talks over the weekend to respond to her demands for action, and the schools curriculum authority was already looking at the inclusion of civic responsibility issues in the revised national curriculum.

"There is no doubt that Mrs Lawrence, with her particularly tragic circumstances and with the dignity that she has brought to those circumstances, is a very poignant focus for the whole of that anxiety and I think we can all work together to take the debate further," Mrs Shephard said.

Downing Street said Mrs Lawrence had "touched a chord with government strategy"Home Office sources were guarded, but Mr Howard may seek to put a range of law and order measures in the Queen's Speech in the context of the wider campaign led by Mrs Lawrence to tackle the lawlessness among young people which claimed her husband's life.

Alex Carlile, for the Liberal Democrats, described a moral crusade, or trying to instil a sense of duty and responsibility in young people, as "very valuable". He warned against patronising young people but said Mrs Lawrence had hit on a very important point. "We must not accept the inevitability of thugs roaming the streets, of tragedies like that which befell her husband," he said. "We can work with young people to give them better aspirations."