IT was the launch of the Oxfordshire Conservatives’ county election campaign. But David Cameron produced howls of laughter by suggesting that it was the stuff of fantasy for Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.

“To see this many Conservatives in a prison, must be Jacqui Smith’s dream,” said the Conservative leader, looking across the room at Oxford’s Malmaison Hotel, packed with Tory county council and European election candidates.

There could been no escaping the fact that launching the Tory manifesto for the county council elections on Friday in a former prison had proved a master stroke.

It coincided with news Damian Green, the Tory frontbench MP arrested over the controversial Home Office leaks inquiry, would not be facing charges after all.

Witney MP Mr Cameron, in buoyant mood, heaped praise on the ruling Conservative group at County Hall, who he said had brought an end to years of “grid lock”, when hung councils stopped anything being achieved.

He told local Conservatives that the biggest priority was helping people through the recession.

“And he said the Tory administration had helped hard-up families by reducing council tax increases every year.

“What Keith Mitchell and his team have shown is that efficiencies can be achieved,” he said.

“I think everybody knows that you’ve got to work hard, whether locally or centrally, to provide value for money.

“That is what they have been doing here.”

Asked by the Oxford Mail whether he would be supporting the Tory group’s opposition to the proposed Weston-on-the-Green eco-town and to extensive building on the Green Belt, he said he believed such key decisions were best made locally.

Mr Cameron said: “The right thing is for a government to set the framework and say what the targets should be.

“Local councils should have to take their own decisions about how to meet them, and then justify it to the electorate.”

But afterwards he made clear the Conservatives remained unconvinced about the creation of eco-town settlements.

He said: “We were very suspicious that they were just a way of dressing up old development projects with a greenwash.

“We have said eco-towns are only right if they are genuinely eco-towns and we withdrew our support on that basis.

“Locally it’s up to local people to make their views known and they have been making their views known very vigorously.”

He declined to be drawn on the Conservative group’s plans to build a giant incinerator, either at Sutton Courtenay or Ardley, to burn much of the county’s waste.

He said: “It is up to local authorities to decide the right way to meet their obligations.

“There are a range of different things councils can do and a range of different authorities who they can work with.

“But it is up to them to make a decision and then defend it in the court of public opinion.”

Elections will held for Oxfordshire County Council across the county on Thursday, June 4.

These elections were originally due to have been held on May 7.

They were postponed by the Government to coincide with the European elections.

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