The beauty of our landscape, the particular cultures and traditions that rural life sustains. These are national treasures, to be cherished and protected for everyone's benefit.

It's not enough for politicians just to say that – we need leaders that really understand it and feel it in their bones. I do.

However, it's not about this policy or that policy. It's about an attitude – a philosophy of government if you like – that has taken hold of our country and which is causing great damage, not just in the countryside, but throughout Britain.

I want to explain what that attitude is, why I think it's so damaging and how we plan to change it.

The attitude that has done so much damage is the belief that the only thing that matters when it comes to policy is economic value – that social value doesn't matter.

So for the last decade or so, in the name of modernisation, rationalisation and efficiency, we have been living under a regime of government by management consultant and policy by powerpoint.

The result has not been a contented, streamlined nation humming with efficiency.

The result has been an explosion of bureaucracy, cost and irritation, endless upheavals and pointless reorganisations, the elbowing aside of colourful, human, informal relationships based on common sense and trust in favour of the grey, mechanical, joyless mantras of the master planner with his calculations, projections and impact assessments.

The real world effect of all this? Post Office closures, library closures, police station closures, the closure of small shops, small schools and now GP surgeries under threat. All this because we live under a regime that prizes bureaucratic neatness above all else.

A regime – indeed, a whole culture that it has spawned – which knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. This is not just socially destructive; it's economically inefficient too. Because when you attack and undermine the institutions that are the foundations of our society – family, neighbourhood, community – all you do is
create extra costs for the state to pick up.

These are the costs of social failure, the failure to recognise social value as well as economic value the failure to recognise that there is such a thing as society, it's just not the same thing as the state.

There are four ways in particular that social value has been undermined in recent years.

First, through top-down policy making and a big-is-beautiful approach. Second, through the unthinking adoption of the latest fad or fashion. Third, through endless new regulations that are not needed. And fourth – conversely – through the failure to get regulation right when it is needed.

For example, it may be cheaper to close down the small rural post offices but in doing so you close down the informal networks that can give elderly and often isolated people vital interaction and connections that can help avoid the need for more hospital calls or adult social services.

The supposed benefits of these top-down reorganisations often seem to accrue to the bureaucracy rather than the user. They do not deliver taxpayer value because they destroy social value.

Our philosophy, therefore, is one that understands social value and seeks to enhance it. But what will that mean in practice? Let me give you some examples of the specific steps we will take.

Our school reforms will make it easy to set up more small, independently run schools that are sensitive to community needs and not the direction of central or local government.

Our police reforms will create accountable police forces, so that people can come together and make the police – through elected commissioners, crime maps and beat meetings – act on crime and anti-social behaviour.

We will stop the top-down reorganisations and pointless structural upheavals that have done so much damage in the NHS.

And in perhaps less obvious areas, too, we will look for ways to give power to the local, the individual, the community. Power is – literally – a case in point. The energy market in this country is crying out for Conservative reform.

In the 21st century, we shouldn't have to depend solely on the big, lumbering national grid that wastes so much energy in generation and transmission. So our plans for feed-in tariffs will encourage a shift towards more decentralised energy so farmers and others can become producers as well as consumers of power.

There's something else we're looking at too – the position of small shops. The personal and specialised offer from independent retailers, combined with their tendency to be more involved in community activities, to be plugged into local social networks or to support local suppliers, means that they should be treated differently.

It makes sense for them to benefit not only from retention and strengthening of the "needs test" in planning law, but also from an advantageous tax and regulatory regime which tips the balance back
in their favour against the larger retailers.

This new approach is part of a bigger picture. The next Conservative government will attempt to develop a measure or series of measures of social value that will inform our policy-making when in power. When making decisions, ministers will take account not just of economic efficiency but also social efficiency.

So with a Conservative government, the strengthening of society will be at the heart of government action. Small schools will provide better relationships between pupils and teachers and a more nurturing environment to help the emotional development of children.

The renewed local GP service will give young mums a single point of contact for their health needs, so they feel they have someone who understands their problems and who they can trust to help them.

Rural post offices will continue to provide a place for elderly people to have daily social interaction outside the home and allow them to maintain social networks.

If Britain is serious about strengthening society, we need a government that will always take account of social value, alongside economic and environmental value, in everything it does. And that is the government that I want to lead.

David Cameron is leader of the Conservative Party. This is an edited version of a speech that he delivered yesterday to the Campaign for the Preservation of Rural England.