Social Policy in a Cold Climate: A Framework for Analysing the Effects of Social Policy

Ruth Lupton, Tania Burchardt, John Hills, Kitty Stewart and Polly Vizard

Published 22 April 2013

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In the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2007/8, social policy and the welfare state in the UK have been undergoing a period of extraordinary change. After a decade of welfare state expansion to 2007, with particularly high spending on health and education, Labour’s response to the financial crash was to increase public spending in a counter-recessionary move. Since the change of government in 2010, this strategy has been overturned, replaced by extensive cuts to public spending, arguably the largest since 1921-4, and major structural reforms in many areas of social policy.