Within days of Liverpool City Council saying that it was pulling out of the scheme because cuts made it unworkable – a move that Conservatives said was party political sabotage – the outgoing head of Community Service Volunteers Dame Elisabeth Hoodless said public sector cuts made it just too difficult to train volunteers.
Dame Elisabeth could not be accused of playing party politics. Her announcement followed the politically inconvenient revelation by Lord Wei – the 34-year-old appointed by David Cameron to the House of Lords to oversee the Big Society project – that he had been forced to scale down his unpaid voluntary work from three days a week to two in order to make a living for his family.
The TUC organised a special conference of 150 voluntary groups in London at which it was claimed that they are facing real terms cuts of £4.5 billion in funding.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said at the conference: “These savage, ideological cuts will impact hardest on Britain’s poorest, most vulnerable communities and undermine our civil society at a time when the country needs it more than ever before.”
Mr Cameron sought to regain lost political ground during his weekly House of Commons exchange with Labour leader Ed Miliband when he said his Government was making £200 million via contributions from the financial industry to a Big Society Bank.
Mr Miliband had taunted Mr Cameron that his cuts were making society “smaller and weaker, not bigger and better” and that even his flagship council, Tory-controlled Hammersmith and Fulham, was cutting libraries, Sure Start and Citizens’ Advice Bureaux.
He said Mr Cameron had promised to protect Sure Start children’s centres but had cut funding by 9 per cent and said 250 centres are predicted to close within the year.
Downing Street rejected this and insisted the budget is rising from £2,212 million to £2,297 million.
Mr Cameron also told MPs the Government is putting in £470 million over four years into charities and voluntary bodies and a further £100 million will be made available to help charities worst affected by spending cuts.
Despite Downing Street’s insistance that the Daycare Trust had backed up its claims to protect Sure Start the organisation said the Government has, in fact, removed the promised ring-fence around Sure Start budgets and it repeated its warning that 250 centres face closure.
