Capital to the rescue? New Labour's business solutions to old         welfare problems

K. Farnsworth

doi:10.1177/0261018306068477

Capital to the rescue? New Labour's business solutions to old welfare problems

K. Farnsworth

Social Policy and Social Work

Research output: Other contribution

Abstract

Business people, business associations and individual firms have been enlisted in various ways by New Labour as part of their strategy to identify and resolve a number of problems within the British welfare state. Business has been important to New Labour’s welfare strategies in at least three ways. First, New Labour has endeavoured to gear social policy more towards the needs of the profit making sector in the hope that this would increase competitiveness and help it to expand welfare expenditure in future. Second, by increasing the inputs of business people and firms into social policy, the government hoped to rescue services from their inefficient public sector strait-jackets. Third, the government has looked to private firms as important new sources of financing for welfare infrastructure. However, this embedding of business culture, business people and private enterprise into social policy has produced few real benefits to services, their employees or their users. This paper examines and evaluates New Labour’s strategy of embedding business into social policy in order to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of welfare services.

Original language	English
Number of pages	26
Volume	26
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1177/0261018306068477
Publication status	Published - 2006

Publication series

Name	Critical Social Policy
Volume	26

Access to Document

10.1177/0261018306068477

Cite this

@misc{f15420705f934429ba46cfc706108865,

title = "Capital to the rescue? New Labour's business solutions to old welfare problems",

abstract = "Business people, business associations and individual firms have been enlisted in various ways by New Labour as part of their strategy to identify and resolve a number of problems within the British welfare state. Business has been important to New Labour{\textquoteright}s welfare strategies in at least three ways. First, New Labour has endeavoured to gear social policy more towards the needs of the profit making sector in the hope that this would increase competitiveness and help it to expand welfare expenditure in future. Second, by increasing the inputs of business people and firms into social policy, the government hoped to rescue services from their inefficient public sector strait-jackets. Third, the government has looked to private firms as important new sources of financing for welfare infrastructure. However, this embedding of business culture, business people and private enterprise into social policy has produced few real benefits to services, their employees or their users. This paper examines and evaluates New Labour{\textquoteright}s strategy of embedding business into social policy in order to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of welfare services.",

author = "K. Farnsworth",

year = "2006",

doi = "10.1177/0261018306068477",

language = "English",

volume = "26",

series = "Critical Social Policy",

type = "Other",

}

TY - GEN

T1 - Capital to the rescue? New Labour's business solutions to old welfare problems

AU - Farnsworth, K.

PY - 2006

Y1 - 2006

N2 - Business people, business associations and individual firms have been enlisted in various ways by New Labour as part of their strategy to identify and resolve a number of problems within the British welfare state. Business has been important to New Labour’s welfare strategies in at least three ways. First, New Labour has endeavoured to gear social policy more towards the needs of the profit making sector in the hope that this would increase competitiveness and help it to expand welfare expenditure in future. Second, by increasing the inputs of business people and firms into social policy, the government hoped to rescue services from their inefficient public sector strait-jackets. Third, the government has looked to private firms as important new sources of financing for welfare infrastructure. However, this embedding of business culture, business people and private enterprise into social policy has produced few real benefits to services, their employees or their users. This paper examines and evaluates New Labour’s strategy of embedding business into social policy in order to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of welfare services.

AB - Business people, business associations and individual firms have been enlisted in various ways by New Labour as part of their strategy to identify and resolve a number of problems within the British welfare state. Business has been important to New Labour’s welfare strategies in at least three ways. First, New Labour has endeavoured to gear social policy more towards the needs of the profit making sector in the hope that this would increase competitiveness and help it to expand welfare expenditure in future. Second, by increasing the inputs of business people and firms into social policy, the government hoped to rescue services from their inefficient public sector strait-jackets. Third, the government has looked to private firms as important new sources of financing for welfare infrastructure. However, this embedding of business culture, business people and private enterprise into social policy has produced few real benefits to services, their employees or their users. This paper examines and evaluates New Labour’s strategy of embedding business into social policy in order to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of welfare services.

U2 - 10.1177/0261018306068477

DO - 10.1177/0261018306068477

M3 - Other contribution

VL - 26

T3 - Critical Social Policy

ER -