Shadow Cabinet members Chris Grayling, Michael Gove, Theresa May, Sayeeda Warsi, Dominic Grieve, Maria Miller and David Willetts discussed the issue of mending our broken society.
In a UK first, as well as giving speeches they also took questions from Twitter about how they will support social responsibility and strong families so that we mend our broken society and the crime it brings
Michael Gove's speech came as new analysis was revealed showing that there are over 1,000 pupils excluded a day for physical and verbal assaults.
"When there are over 1,000 pupils a day excluded for abuse, assaults or threats it is clear that we have a serious problem with discipline in our schools", he said. The Conservatives have also published today a briefing document on behaviour and discipline which sets out the scale of the problem and what action will be taken to deal with it.
"Unless there is good discipline pupils can't learn and teachers can't teach but over the last ten years teachers have been denied the power to keep order in the classroom and stop violent incidents", Gove added. "The children who suffer most are the poorest and the country as a whole loses out when adult authority is undermined".
He said that a Conservative Government will "make it easier for teachers to remove violent and disruptive pupils from class and protect teachers from malicious legal action".
"We will give headteachers a general legal power to ban, search for, and confiscate any items they think may cause violence or disruption, which the Government opposes on ‘human rights’ grounds. We will end the right to appeal against exclusion which allows pupils guilty of knife crimes to be returned to a school after being expelled by the headmaster."