Member

I will finish by talking about the inspiration for this programme, which can be traced back through six decades of community politics. We have drawn enormously from John Prescott and Baroness Armstrong’s new deal for communities, which provided the stability of long-term funding backed by the support of central government. Like them, our aspiration is to empower local people to drive the renewal of their neighbourhood and to deliver the transformational change that they want to see. This announcement also has its origins in the community development policies of Wilson and Callaghan, who drew the link between social deprivation and social division, and now we are looking to the future.