The Big Society will only emerge when the government cuts the sector’s dependence on grants and strips regulations to “unleash a tide of philanthropy”, according to Cass Business School’s Philip Booth.

Booth, who is the university’s insurance and risk management professor and also editorial and programme director at the institute of economic affairs, made his comments through the Conservative Home Comment pages this morning in regards to rumours that the government feels the Big Society programme has stalled. “It is not surprising,” he said, “The coalition’s idea of the Big Society often seems to involve no more than getting a few people round a table to discuss how the government can design the Big Society.”

What it should involve, he suggests, is a radical “rolling back of the state”. “Welfare,” he said, “flourished when the state was not responsible for welfare”. The same is true in finance, he added, and philanthropy:

“There seems to be a relationship between how socialistic a country is and the amount of philanthropy it generates – having the government put its hand in its citizens’ pockets is a substitute for people putting their own hands in their own pockets,” he said.

While Booth admits he has little faith that the government would demolish the welfare state “any time soon”, he believes the action is practicable for charities: “(The coalition) can create the conditions in which philanthropy can thrive.

“The government should resist the calls to fund the Big Society by giving more grants to charities – this will just make charities clients of the state, but it should strip away the regulations that surround charities and encourage charitable giving.”

Accusing the Big Society plans of being “corporatist”, Booth calls for the government to have faith in both the sector to run its services and in the UK public to give:

“The Government wishes to work with businesses, charities, individuals and local government to engineer the Big Society. It looks rather like the model we used to run our economy in the 1970s,” he said. “However, the Government really should let go. It should develop policies that will unleash a tide of philanthropy.”

Booth makes his comments amid rising unrest over the Big Society agenda with Labour MP Graham Jones accusing the scheme of "failing charities" and NCVO chief Sir Stuart Etherington voicing concerns over its capacity for positive change.