WE'VE FAILED OUR KIDS; Top Tory Discusses Plans to Safeguard Children's Futures: WHAT Would a Conservative Government Mean for Young People and Families in Coventry and Warwickshire - from Sure Start Children's Centres for the Under-5s to Universities? Political Reporter LES REID Speaks to David Willetts, the Tory Responsible for Family Policy and Higher Education, Who Says the Young Have Been Let Down

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Byline: LES REID

HE'S known as "Two Brains" Willetts for the intellectual capacity behind his considerable forehead. A former minister under John Major and longer-serving opposition frontbencher, David Willetts MP could reemerge from the shadows after the election to take charge of higher education and training.

The universities and skills shadow minister is also a leading Tory thinker on children's policy, and has just published a book called The Pinch, provocatively subtitled "How the Baby Boomers Took Their Children's Future - And Why They Should Give It Back."

His thesis is that the comparatively wealthy baby-boom generation, aged 45 to 65, has let down its children by saddling them with future debt. Teenagers and twenty-somethings are also unable to get on the property ladder and face record youth unemployment.

Baby …