GOVERNMENT house-building plans for Kent risk creating a new generation of sink estates blighted by high crime rates and vandalism, according to Tory leadership contender David Davis.

Mr Davis, who spent Monday in Kent drumming up support for his campaign, warned that John Prescott’s masterplan meant a throwback to the 1960s high-rise council estates, with the push for high-density affordable housing in danger of becoming a "betrayal" of those who could not currently get on the housing ladder.

"It will take us back to the 1950s and 1960s, when we created a lot of estates with high crime rates. There were small back alleyways, no car-parking and estates ridden with crime," said Mr Davis.

"What sort of betrayal is it if we tell people you will get new houses built but they will in time turn into sink estates? Organic development is very, very important."

He pledged to strip regional quangos of the power to set strategic housing policy and restore the job to county councils.

Mr Davis, who made a keynote speech to party supporters at County Hall, also stopped off at the headquarters of the the Kent Messenger Group, where he met senior editors.

In a sideswipe at his rival for the job, he said the party should not vote on the basis of which candidate was better at public relations.

"If members make the judgement that it will be a PR election, they will choose Cameron. If they make a judgement the election will be about an honest party as against a spin-led party, they will choose me."

The public was "smarter than politicians gave them credit for" and had seen through Blair’s spin and at the time of the next election would be craving for more honesty from politicians.

"The public knows Blair is a media manipulator and they do not like spin."

Under his leadership, the Tory party would be a party in which "what you see is what you get. We will be straight-talking and willing to stand up for a principle."