By David Ainsworth, Third Sector Online, 28 February 2008
The Prime Minister announced yesterday that an extra £37m would be made available for social enterprises.
Gordon Brown said the Government would provide a new £10m capital risk fund for social enterprise, and an extra £27m for investment in health and social care.
In an announcement made by voice message at Voice08, a conference on social enterprise in Liverpool, he said: “If our economy is to flourish, if our communities are to become more closely knit, and if we are to take care of the natural environment and the resources on which our economic activity depends, we must find new and more equitable ways of doing business.
“As social entrepreneurs, you are at the forefront of the changes that we need to make.”
Hazel Blears, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, used the event to announce the creation of a Social Enterprise Unit in the Department of Communities and Local Government, "to make sure that community enterprise runs right through my Department's DNA". She also praised social entrepreneurs.
She said: “You embody my kind of politics – not Whitehall trying to guess what people’s problems are and giving them a solution, but local people coming together, finding their own solutions and having a real say over the future of the places where they live.”