VOLUNTARY groups cannot “fill the gap” in essential services that will be left by forthcoming Government cuts to public spending, Hampshire MP John Denham has warned.

Mr Denham, Labour MP for Southampton Itchen, said the Tories were wrong to suggest that, in Prime Minister David Cameron’s “big society”, groups of volunteers who gave their time to help their local communities could take the place of good public services.

The MP spoke out ahead of this month’s comprehensive spending review, in which Chancellor George Osborne is expected to announce huge cuts to departmental budgets.

Mr Denham said Southamp-ton was a community of “extraordinary generosity, where thousands of people help their neighbours and their communities with countless acts of thoughtfulness every day”.

However, contrary to the Tories’ anti-state rhetoric, he insisted: “We don’t have to choose between state and society”.

Mr Denham illustrated his argument, in a speech to Labour activists in Manchester this week, with the case of a voluntary group that offers Southampton pensioners friendship and support.

Communicare – whose volunteers visit lonely, housebound elderly people in the city – represented “the best of personal giving”, he said.

The Daily Echo-supported charity saw the first Tree of Light go up in Woolston at Christmas, with hundreds of people sponsoring fairylights for their lost loved ones to raise cash to help the tireless volunteers make a difference to the city’s most vulnerable people.

The MP told Labour delegates: “I know a group in Southampton who befriend lonely older people.

“They don’t bath them, they don’t clothe them or give them medication.

“It’s the public services – the carers, the nurses, the financial support – which make it possible for them to live at home in comfort.

“But it’s the volunteer friends who shop with them, go to the theatre with them, have a cup of tea and a conversation with them, who give time that, frankly, no state could ever give – who make their lives not just comfortable, but rich.

“The best of public service; the best of personal giving. But take the public service away, and personal giving can’t fill the gap.”

The MP added: “Our party and our members know the difference between a really big society, a good society; and a narrow and mean society.”