Our Big Society Agenda

David Cameron has set out the government's plans to end Labour's top-down, controlling approach and give people the tools to improve their own lives.

Speaking in Liverpool, the Prime Minister said the plans mark "the biggest, most dramatic redistribution of power from elites in Whitehall to the man and woman on the street."

The Prime Minister has outlined three key strands for the Big Society agenda:

1. Social Action - the government will foster and support a new culture of voluntarism and philanthropy
2. Public service reform - getting rid of the centralised bureaucracy and in its place giving professionals much more freedom, opening up public services to new providers like charities, social enterprises and private companies so we get more innovation, diversity and responsiveness to public need
3. Community empowerment - creating communities with neighbourhoods who are in charge of their own destiny, who feel if they club together and get involved they can shape the world around them.

Speaking in Liverpool, David Cameron said, "I passionately believe what we have begun here will spread right across our country - covering it in innovation, local inspiration and civic action."

And he concluded, "I think we are on to a really big idea, a really exciting future for our country and today, I hope, is one more, big step towards that."

Read David Cameron's speech in full.