Published 2001 (ISBN 1 902488 36 9) Price £9.95
A lecture delivered on 20th July 2000 at the Merchant Taylor’s Hall, London, at the invitation of the Charities Aid Foundation. The Chancellor of the Exchequer talked about the voluntary principle, the part it has to play in a modern civic society, and the steps the Government is taking to encourage voluntary action and voluntary giving. He set voluntary action and civic society in a broader context of social fairness, outlining both their historical roots in Britain and their more general philosophical basis. He argued for a new and more creative relationship between individual, community and state, in which the same social concerns that formerly led the state to acquire power must now lead it to give power away. He emphasised the practical strengths of voluntary action, lying in its local character, its greater flexibility to innovate, its individual and personal approach, and its capacity to strengthen our citizenship, and related these to the approach the Government has taken in Sure Start, the Children’s Fund and other similar programmes.