David Cameron's anti-business rhetoric is designed merely to change the Tories' image as "rapacious capitalist pigs", and does not herald a raft of tough new regulation, the shadow trade and industry secretary said.

"Nothing we say is against business, it's designed to correct a political misconception," Alan Duncan said in an interview with the FT. He said a Conservative government would rely mainly on exhortation to improve corporate behaviour, "because we want to deregulate . . . Business should have to adhere to a few simple decencies, not an encyclopaedia of directions."