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

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.