The Big Society – Liverpool speech 2010

DAVID CAMERON – BIG SOCIETY SPEECH LIVERPOOL JULY 2010

“There are the things you do because it’s your duty.

Sometimes unpopular – but you do them because it is in the national interest.

And yes, cutting the deficit falls into that camp.

But there are the things you do because it’s your passion.

The things that fire you up in the morning, that drive you, that you truly believe will make a real difference to the country you love.

And my great passion is building the Big Society.”

“But the potential problem is that you can lock smaller organisations out, because they don’t have access to start-up capital.

So government has a crucial role to play in bridging the gap – and indeed, more widely, in connecting private capital to investment in social projects.

We have already said we will create a Big Society Bank to help finance social enterprises, charities and voluntary groups through intermediaries.

And I can announce today that it will be established using every penny of dormant bank and building society account money allocated to England.

These unclaimed assets, alongside the private sector investment that we will leverage, will mean that the Big Society Bank will – over time – make available hundreds of millions of pounds of new finance to some of our most dynamic social organisations.”