The Decline of the Welfare State

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Abstract
A welfare system which many in the Labour Party believe to be the very epitome of socialist planning has never achieved the level of minimum provision thought essential by a card-carrying member of the Liberal Party like Beveridge. In the period since the early 1950’s the welfare state has remained an important preoccupation of the Labour Party, but increasingly the reform of the social services has been seen as a special issue, isolated from the more general range of aims and strategies to be adopted by a Labour government. Welfare reform had become the sugar on the pill of economic rationalisation, the bleeding heart prominently worn on the technocrat’s sleeve. Within the Conservative Party the selectivist theory of welfare was developed in conjunction with a policy of direct State support for an extension of the private market in education, housing, health insurance and pension provision.

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