LORD MANDELSON AND THE BIG SOCIETY

That this House welcomes Lord Mandelson's recent conversion to being a supporter of the Big Society, widely reported in the national press; further welcomes his comments that the Government's welfare and education reforms are `moving in the right direction'; is glad that Lord Mandelson has wholly rejected his earlier position of April 2010, when he said that the Big Society was `neither practical nor realistic'; congratulates him on his statement of October 2010 that `we will have to find more of our solutions from within the communities that make our society'; and therefore calls on the Government to thank Lord Mandelson for his support, and to welcome him into the Big Society tent.