PM issues rallying call to Britain
6th October 2010
Prime Minister David Cameron defended his government’s proposed spending cuts during his closing speech to the Conservative Party Conference saying there was "no other responsible way".
A large part of his speech focused on his "Big Society" agenda and he dismissed Labour's claims that it was just a way of imposing spending cuts by making the general public volunteer to do some of the work currently done by the state.
He explained that the Big Society was about "Government helping to build a nation of doers and go-getters, where people step forward not sit back, where people come together to make life better".
He also forecast that his Big Society agenda would take power away from central government and give it to local people and that the "beating, radical heart" of his government was allowing local people more choice in the services they use and increasing transparency about state spending.
"We are the radicals now, breaking apart the old system with a massive transfer of power from the state to citizens, politicians to people, Government to society," he said.
In what sounded like a rallying call David Cameron urged Britons to get more involved in their society. "When we say 'we are all in this together', that is not a cry for help but a call to Arms," he said. "Society is not a spectator sport. This is your country. It's time to believe it. It's time to step up and own it."
At the end of his 52 minute speech, the Prime Minister was joined on stage by his wife Samantha as the delegates gave him a standing ovation and the conference hall was bathed in the sounds of the Motown hit It Takes Two.
