Ministers want to establish a cross-party consensus on difficult issues.

Tony Blair has ordered a fresh approach after reportedly being disappointed by the "petty point-scoring" debate conducted by rival parties, including his own, during the recent general election campaign.

Last week the prime minister said there were several issues on which he hoped "to get a broad political consensus".

These included the reform of pensions and the council tax, and the funding of transport projects.

"Each of these three are very tricky, but they have one thing in common — they require long-term solutions that survive any change of government," Blair said.

Interviewed in the FT, the new Commons leader Geoff Hoon says he and his cabinet colleagues will discuss with Labour MPs the "ideas the government is bringing forward".

"Members of Parliament have been put down and I think that's wrong . . . What a lot of Labour MPs complained about in the past was a sense in which they were taken for granted, that they had not had the opportunity of participating in discussions," he says.