THE “Big Society” is a “here one day, gone the next” political soundbite, the Bishop of Liverpool has said.

The Rt Rev James Jones used his annual Presidential Address to the Diocese of Liverpool’s Synod to highlight how people in Liverpool are struggling as government decisions seem to target the city unfairly.

He said the current “big idea” of the Big Society would pass – but the Church was here to stay.

He added: “The truth is that political slogans, especially in a media age which consumes as well as spits out sound bites such as ‘back to basics, the third way, the Big Society’, are here one day and gone the next; the church for all its faults and foibles will still be there even though its form may well change.”

He insisted he was not “rubbishing” any slogan but said Big Society had “become rather synonymous with the national debate about deficit reduction and cuts in public expenditure.”

The Bishop said the slogan had, at least, stirred up debate over what sort of society we should be. But he said he had been “guilty” of jumping into that debate by saying the church had been building the Big Society for the last 2,000 years.