Witney MP and Conservative Party leader David Cameron will today give a speech in Oxford on global poverty.

Mr Cameron is visiting staff and volunteers at Oxfam, the city-based aid charity, before speaking at Oxford Town Hall, where he is expected to reaffirm the Tories' commitment to put tackling international poverty at the top of the political agenda.

Late last year, the Conservatives launched their globalisation and global poverty group, chaired by Peter Lilley, and have sought advice from Sir Bob Geldof.

However, critics have suggested political parties have been too quick to jump on the Make Poverty History bandwagon without backing the ideas with genuine policies.

Maranda St John Nicolle is the co-ordinator of Christian Concern for One World, a charity concerned with Third World development education working in Oxfordshire.

She said: "In the short term, we'd like to see the Conservative Party support efforts to amend the Company Law Reform Bill in order to make businesses take into account the social and environmental impacts of their activities both here and in other countries.

"We hope that if in power, the Tories would work strongly for reform of the Common Agricultural Policy and moderation of Europe's protectionist tendencies.

"We'd like the Tories to consider a pragmatic approach to trade which doesn't try to impose a uniform free-trade solution on the world's poorest people."

Sir Bob insisted he was "in no-one's pocket" after agreeing to advise the Tories' policy group tasked with creating a strategy to defeat global poverty.

The former rock singer, who famously persuaded former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to waive VAT on the Band Aid charity single, said that if he disagreed with any Tory policy, then he would say so publicly.

Amanda Webb-Johnson, director of Oxford-based Refugee Resource, said: "If David Cameron came to power, I hope he would have the courage to tell the truth about why asylum seekers come to this country in fear of persecution and to remind the nation of the ongoing importance of providing a place of sanctuary for people who are dispossessed."

David Coates, director of Oxford-based Opportunity International UK, said: "A year on from the G8, we are watching and waiting to see if the new policy initiatives of the Conservative Party under David Cameron will act to tackle poverty at its roots in the developing world.

"The World Bank estimates that 1.2bn people live on less than US $1 a day.

"We are encouraged that two schools in Oxford, St Edward's and the Dragon School, have become the first to join the microfinance initiative and be part of the working solution in making poverty history and we hope the Government will do the same."