A new welfare settlement? The Coalition government and welfare-to-work

‘Beat the cheat’: portrayals of disability benefit claimants in print media

“…Since the introduction of the Disability Discrimination Act in 1995, policy has intended to promote disabled people's independence, much of which is driven by campaigning by disability rights groups using the social model as a platform from which to voice their demands (Barnes, 2007). It is broadly agreed that Coalition welfare policy represents an intensification of existing New Labour policies, rather than a new direction (Driver, 2011;McKay and Rowlingson, 2011;Deacon and Patrick, 2011). This intensification may be closely related to cost-saving given that the Coalition's priority is cutting the budget deficit, but it also reflects how close Labour and the Conservatives were on this policy area prior to 2010.…”

Beyond Continuity? Understanding Change in the UK Welfare State since 2010

“…Alongside many other countries, it experienced a large exogenous ‘shock’ in the 2008 financial crisis. The pace of policy change in welfare has, however, remained slow, such that some analyses are reluctant to recognize it as change at all and, instead, identify broad continuity (Lister and Bennett ; McKay and Rowlingson ; Deacon and Patrick ; Driver ). The tendency is to explain ‘what might seem to be new as just another version of the old’ (Streeck and Thelen : 3).…”

Opioid pharmacotherapy: Treatment, regimes, constructions and control

“…Replicating active labour market policies pursued in Europe, Australia and the United States (Daguerre and Etherington, 2009;Martin, 1998;Mead, 1997;Nickell, 1997), the New Labour (1997 and ConservativeLiberal Democrat (since 2010) governments have demonstrated a strong commitment to using welfare-to-work programmes as policy mechanisms to encourage, enable, and sometimes coerce, workless citizens to obtain paid employment (see Deacon & Patrick, 2011). Programmes were piloted initially on young people (aged up to 25), before being utilised for other groups including the disabled and lone parents (see Miller, 2000).…”

“…Since 2008, problem drug users (PDUs) have been added to a list of groups for whom intervention was now necessary if an (overly ambitious) government target of 80 per cent employment (DWP, 2005) was to be met. Consequently it is possible to argue, as Deacon and Patrick (2011) do, that the welfare state is now built around work. Only those of working-age who are assessed as having an illness or disability which impacts negatively on their ability to carry out work are permitted not to do so.…”

“…These measures are underpinned by three beliefs; first, that employment can unproblematically sustain recovery, despite as we shall see later in the paper the contested evidence-base for such a claim (see also Bauld, Hay, McKell, & Carroll, 2010); second that paid work has a transformative potential, reducing poverty and social exclusion and enhancing health and well-being (Deacon & Patrick, 2011), and third, that when applicable, paid work should be the primary duty of the responsible citizen (Patrick, 2012). There is also a further dimension: successive governments have made little attempt to disguise that the high proportion of PDUs claiming welfare benefits is morally unacceptable, as well as detrimental to recovery; justifying policy interventions transferred from the field of criminal justice which make PDUs face 'tough choices' between accessing drug treatment or facing the consequences in the form of (benefit) sanctions.…”