The Double Crisis of the Welfare State

Abstract

The British welfare state faces a double crisis: immediate cutbacks in response to the recession bearing most heavily on benefits and services for those on low incomes, especially women and families, and longer-term pressures on health and social care, education and pensions from population ageing and other factors. Government decisions to focus the cuts on the most vulnerable exacerbate the first crisis. Policies which fragment and privatise the main state services in response to the second undermine the tradition of a universal welfare state. The cuts are deeper and more precipitate than any among comparable developed economies or for at least a century in the UK.