What they’re saying about the PM’s ‘Big Society’

David Cameron has outlined his plans for a 'Big Society', hailing the scheme as a dramatic redistribution of power "from elites in Whitehall to the man and woman on the street". Making his announcement in Liverpool yesterday morning, the Prime Minister said he wanted to create communities with "oomph", giving individuals and voluntary groups the power to run services such as post offices, schools and local museums.
 
The first phase of the project, which formed a key part of the Conservatives' election manifesto, will see various initiatives rolled out to three other communities as well as Liverpool - Eden Valley in Cumbria, Windsor and Maidenhead, and the south London borough of Sutton.
 
Cameron said he wanted to end the culture under which capable people become "passive recipients" of state help. He rejected suggestions that the programme was a "cover" for substantial welfare cuts. And he denied that the public were either confused or disinterested by the plan.

"This is such a powerful idea for blindingly obvious reasons.” he said. "For years, there was the basic assumption at the heart of government that the way to improve things in society was to micro-manage from the centre, from Westminster. But this just doesn't work."
 
Voluntary groups have questioned where the money for the schemes will come from. Cameron said today that funding will come from a 'big society bank' using "every penny of dormant bank and building society account money allocated to England".

The PM said that this will eventually drive hundreds of millions of pounds into the programme. However, some reports claimed that the bank would only be able to launch with reserves of around £60m.
 
WHAT THEY ARE SAYING:Mary Riddell, the Daily Telegraph: "Mr Cameron unveiled a jam and Jerusalem Britain run along the lines of a bumper church fete. Naturally he did not mention that many of the voluntary bodies needed to underpin this civic renaissance are being cut to the bone, nor that his much-vaunted ‘big society bank’ may open with reserves of as little as £60 million."

Tim Bale, the Guardian: "Big Society's biggest fans, one suspects, are those Tories who couldn't really give a damn about religion or about reconnecting with their own traditions, but simply want to make the UK as much like the US as possible – free of binding international agreements, operating an easy-come-easy-go labour market and with a welfare system that is little more than a safety net supplemented by the charitable (and, for the state, cheap) volunteer work of suitably self-reliant citizens."David Blackburn, the Spectator: "The authors of the Big Society erroneously assumed that people care about community. But community is a turn-off for many, and the Big Society sounded like a nationalised Parish Church meeting – intrusive, vacuous and dominated by shrill busy-bodies."

Ed West, the Daily Telegraph: "Volunteering is, and always will be, dominated by religious groups, almost all of which have views that are incompatible with the moral ethos of the elite; some of them have views that give me the willies, let alone Dave's new Independent-reading friends in the SDP."Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison: "Cameron's big society is a big cop out. Last week the white paper handed over £80bn of NHS cash to GPs and this week the Government wants to find public services to be run by volunteers. We face a government intent on attacking public services and public sector workers from all sides."

Anna Coote, the Guardian: "Democratic government is the only effective vehicle for ensuring that resources are fairly distributed, both across the population and between individuals and groups at local levels. Businesses or third-sector organisations can supplement these functions but cannot replace them, not least because they invariably serve sectoral or specialised interests, rather than those of the nation as a whole. If the state is pruned so drastically that it is neither big enough nor strong enough to carry them out, the effect will be a more troubled and diminished society, not a bigger one."

Philip Johnston, the Daily Telegraph: "Mr Cameron will have little problem finding people in well-off middle-class areas responding to his call because they already do many of the things he is talking about without giving them a fancy name. But it will be less easy to sell the plan where it is needed most – on decaying inner-city estates, where rekindling any sense of community needs one or two strong personalities to lead the way and local government backing (all too often absent) to get things done."

Labour MP Jon Cruddas talking to Sky News: "We disagree about the remedies but I think its good that you have a modern conservatism that is trying to speak about virtue in public life".

Steve Richards, the Independent: "In contrast to the timid Blair, the recklessly bold Cameron has no problems about the need to affect radicalism as he presides over a shrinking state... But while historians will record at length the impact of his economic policies and those relating to health and education, his Big Society is likely to be no more than a small footnote."

Labour leadership candidate Ed Milliband speaking to BBC News: "People in the voluntary sector know that, for all the talk of a big society, what is actually on the way is cuts and the abandonment of community projects across Britain... under the Tories the voluntary sector’s role will be shrunk, not expanded." ·