David Cameron says that social action projects will help us fix our broken politics

Yesterday Donata Huggins attended the Conservative Party's Social Action Conference on behalf of ConservativeHome and filed the following despatch:

“I want social action to be as important to candidates as campaigning on the doorstep, and as important to the life of political parties as policy-making.”

That's what David Cameron told yesterday's Conservative Social Action Conference.

He stated that this “new way of doing politics” was a good antidote to the “collective shame” felt over the expenses scandal and that it would attract new people into politics. The Conservative leader added that “the political elite need to take a step down, and the people on the street need to step up”, changing the focus from “condescending” top-down government solutions on social issues to getting people to ask themselves what they can do as individuals.

The conference publicised the 150 Conservative-led projects set up over the last three years, tackling social issues such as the youth club project set up by Charlotte Leslie, the prospective parliamentary candidate for Bristol North West. 

David Cameron insisted that these were not “flash in the pan photo opportunities” and stressed that social action was “a very deep Conservative value” about “getting up off your backside, rolling up your sleeves, and doing something positive to strengthen society."

> Read the full speech.