Chris Grover
Biographic Data
| ID | 165221 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Chris Grover |
| GIVEN NAMES | Chris |
| FAMILY NAME | Grover |
| SIGNATURE | GROVER C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Lancaster University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3398-5403 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 52 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 218 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 51 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 9 |
The Wage Stop and Restricting Benefit Income in the United Kingdom: Discretion, Wages and Hardship
In 2013 the UK government introduced a household benefit cap to restrict the benefit income of its poorest people. Although taking different forms, such restrictions are not new there. Drawing upon files held at the UK's National Archives, this article focuses upon the years 1935 to 1975 during which the main benefit restriction that operated was the wage stop. The wage stop affected claimants categorised as unemployed. As the article demonstrate…
Explaining the abolition of the wage stop in the UK
Before the introduction of the household benefit cap in the UK in 2013 the previous mechanism there limited the income of social assistance recipients was the wage stop, operating for four decades between 1935 and 1975. Similar to the benefit cap, the wage stop reflected and reproduced concerns with incentivising unemployed people to labour. This raises questions about why the wage stop was abolished in the mid-1970s when worries about unemployme…
The politics of job retention schemes in Britain: The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and the Temporary Short Time Working Compensation Scheme
The UK Government's introduction of the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS) in March 2020 was pitched as unprecedented. Yet, during the 1970s and 1980s, UK governments also operated wage subsidy job retention schemes. Indeed, despite their professed liberal market orientation, Thatcher's radical right Conservative governments presided over the expansive Temporary Short Time Working Compensation Scheme (TSTWCS) between 1979 and 1984. Drawing u…
The Household Benefit Cap: Understanding the restriction of benefit income in Britain
Britain's Household Benefit Cap restricts the amount of benefit income unemployed households can receive. In this article, it is examined using material held at the UK's National Archives recording debates about a proposal to introduce a similar policy - a benefit limit - in the first Thatcher Conservative government elected in 1979. It was rejected, but the Household Benefit Cap was introduced three decades later. The article locates debates abo…
Understanding material assistance in the Children and Young Persons Act 1963: Idealism and classical liberalism in England and Wales
Drawing upon data held at the UK’s National Archives, this article focuses upon the introduction of Section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1963, which allowed local authorities in England and Wales to offer material assistance to families in order to prevent children being received into care or to facilitate their return from care to their families. To understand this development, the article frames its analysis in debates about the natu…
Violent proletarianisation: Social murder, the reserve army of labour and social security ‘austerity’ in Britain
This article examines social security policy for working age people in Britain in the ‘age of austerity’. Drawing upon critical approaches to understanding social policy and violence, the article argues that severe cuts to benefits and the ratcheting up of conditionality for, and the sanctioning of, benefit recipients can be understood as ‘violent proletarianisation’ – using socio-economic inequality and injustice to force the commodification of …
Developments in loaning social assistance: Support for mortgage interest in Britain
Britain's 2015 summer budget introduced a policy extending the use of loans in its social security system. From April 2018 support for mortgage interest will be loaned, rather than granted. Its repayment is to be via a charging order on the homes of benefit recipients and/or from wages when they (re-)enter work. This development is examined in relationship to the use of loans in British social assistance provision. The paper argues that it is con…
Ending reassessment for employment and support allowance for some disabled people in the UK
In October 2016 the newly appointed UK Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Damian Green, announced that some disabled people receiving Employment and Support Allowance would not face reassessment for their financial support to continue. This article critically engages with this announcement in the context of the publication of Improving Lives. The Work, Health and Disability Green Paper shortly afterwards
Social Security and Wage Poverty: Historical and Policy Aspects of Supplementing Wages in Britian and Beyond
This is the first book to examine debates about, and the practice of, state supplementing of wages. It charts the historical development of such policies from prohibition in the 1830s and how oppositi
The end of an era? The resignation of Iain Duncan Smith, Conservatism and social security benefits for disabled people
Iain Duncan Smith resigned as the UK’s Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in March 2016. While not invisible from the debate following his resignation, the fact that changes to social security policy for disabled people were central to Duncan Smith’s time as Secretary of State and central to his (at least public) reasons for resignation was lost in a focus on the internal machinations of the UK’s Conservative Party. In this short article, D…
From wage supplements to a ‘living wage’? A commentary on the problems of predistribution in Britain’s summer budget of 2015
This commentary focuses upon two developments – cuts to wage supplements and an increase in the National Minimum Wage – announced in the first full Conservative government budget in Britain for 18 years. The commentary analyses these through the concept of predistribution and critiques of it. The commentary argues that the two developments can be understood as a weak version of predistribution that will reproduce and deepen class and gender inequ…
Social Fund 20 Years On: Historical and Policy Aspects of Loaning Social Security
Disabled People, Work and Welfare: Is Employment Really the Answer?
Employment and Support Allowance, the ‘summer budget’ and less eligible disabled people
In the first UK budget by a Conservative Government for 18 years, £13 billion per annum savings in social security spending by 2020/21 were announced. Of these, 4.9% (£640 million per annum, and up to £900 million in the years after 2020) is to come from the withdrawal from April 2017 of the work-related component of the Employment and Support Allowance. This means that new claimants will be worse off by £29.05 per week (2015/16 figures) than wou…
Atos Healthcare withdraws from the Work Capability Assessment: A comment
In March 2014 Atos Healthcare withdrew a year early from its contract to provide the UK’s health assessment – the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) – that is supposed to sort disabled people into administrative categories according to their adjudged capability to do paid work. This move was welcomed by political elites, with, for example, UK Coalition Government Minister for Disabled People Mike Penning using it to criticise previous Labour govern…
Disability benefits, welfare reform and employment policy
Disability Benefits, Welfare Reform and Employment Policy is an edited collection published as part of Palgrave Macmillan’s Work and Welfare in Europe series of books. It brings together contributi
From the social fund to local welfare assistance: Central–local government relations and ‘special expenses
In Britain since the 1930s social assistance recipients have in certain circumstances been able to claim ‘exceptional expenses’ in addition to their weekly benefit income. From the 1940s these were administered by its central government. However, in April 2013 the then incarnation of such payments (the discretionary Social Fund) was partly replaced by locally administered Local Welfare Assistance. Drawing upon material held in files at Britain's …
Crime and Inequality
This book examines key relationships between material circumstances and crime, and analyzes the areas of social policy – in particular social security and labour market policy – that are most important in terms of dealing with inequality at the lower end of the income hierarchy. It seeks to explain why inequality is linked to offending behaviour and the evidence underpinning explanations for this, and looks in detail at the relationship between o…
The Allen Report: Class, gender and disadvantage
In this article we focus on the Allen Report, which, along with other documents, is helping to guide the development of the United Kingdom’s coalition government’s policies in relation to child poverty and social mobility. Drawing on empirical research projects with social work service users and practitioners, we take a critical approach to the way in which the Allen Report locates the disadvantages faced by working-class children in the parentin…
Work, worklessness and the political economy of health
A commentary on resistance to the UK’s Work Experience programme: Capitalism, exploitation and wage work
In this commentary we focus upon resistance to the UK’s Work Experience programme that aims to help the young unemployed secure paid employment. The programme hit the news headlines in February 2012 when the group, Right to Work, forced concessions from the UK’s Coalition government that removed sanctions for Work Experience conscripts who left their placement after a week. The paper critically engages with the Right to Work’s demand for ‘real jo…
Neoliberal restructuring, disabled people and social (in)security in Australia and Britain
This paper examines recent social security policies in Australia and the UK for workless disabled people. The paper outlines developments in both countries over the past two decades and points to the fact that while there may be differences in the detail, the trends in such policies in the two countries are similar. This involves moves towards stricter eligibility criteria, greater expectation of workless disabled people to make efforts to (re)en…
Employment and Support Allowance: Capability, personalization and disabled people in the UK
In 2008 the Employment and Support Allowance was introduced in the UK as the income replacement benefit for disabled people. In this paper we focus upon the reasons for its introduction, the notions of disability and the two main ideas – capability and personalization – that provide the framework for its operation. The paper engages with the arguments put forward by the UK's government that the Employment and Support Allowance will enable disable…
Disability and Social (In)Security: Emotions, Contradictions of ‘Inclusion’ and Employment and Support Allowance
The focus of this article is on the ways in which emotions are engaged in the discursive construction and treatment of disabled people in receipt of social security benefits. The article draws upon the literature related to the social importance of emotions and that concerned with moral boundary drawing. It argues that the evocation of emotional reactions is crucial in understanding the ways in which changes to out-of-work benefits for disabled p…
Localism and poverty in the United Kingdom: The case of Local Welfare Assistance
This article focuses on the UK’s Coalition Government’s plans to abolish the discretionary Social Fund and replace it, at least in part, with Local Welfare Assistance (LWA). The article examines this proposal by locating LWA in debates about localism, the idea of which in policy terms unites the two political parties that make up the Coalition government. The article explores the Coalition government’s approach to localism and debates about it, a…
Disabled people, the reserve army of labour and welfare reform
This paper is concerned with explaining why in contemporary society there has been a number of changes to income maintenance and labour market policy for disabled people. Taking a regulation approach theoretical framework it engages with the debate about whether disabled people can be considered to be part of the reserve army of labour. Rejecting previous broad‐brush approaches that seem to suggest that all disabled people are part of the reserve…
Violent proletarianisation: Social murder, the reserve army of labour and social security ‘austerity’ in Britain
This article examines social security policy for working age people in Britain in the ‘age of austerity’. Drawing upon critical approaches to understanding social policy and violence, the article argues that severe cuts to benefits and the ratcheting up of conditionality for, and the sanctioning of, benefit recipients can be understood as ‘violent proletarianisation’ – using socio-economic inequality and injustice to force the commodification of …
Neoliberal restructuring, disabled people and social (in)security in Australia and Britain
This paper examines recent social security policies in Australia and the UK for workless disabled people. The paper outlines developments in both countries over the past two decades and points to the fact that while there may be differences in the detail, the trends in such policies in the two countries are similar. This involves moves towards stricter eligibility criteria, greater expectation of workless disabled people to make efforts to (re)en…
Retrenching Incapacity Benefit: Employment Support Allowance and Paid Work
In October 2008 in the UK Incapacity Benefit (IB) (the main income replacement benefit for sick and disabled claimants) was replaced by the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) for new claimants. Drawing upon recent work on the retrenchment of welfare benefits and services this paper examines the context for the changes, the marketisation of the job placement services for ESA claimants and the extension of conditionality to sick and disabled be…
Social security, employment and Incapacity Benefit: Critical reflections on A new deal for welfare
In January 2006 New Labour published a Green Paper on welfare reform, A new deal for welfare: empowering people to work. Following a consultation period the 2006 Welfare Reform Bill was published in July 2006. The main concern of the Green Paper was with Incapacity Benefit and the people who claim it. This paper critically engages with the proposals outlined in the Green Paper and the subsequent Bill. Focusing upon the social security and labour …
Market Workfare: Social Security, Social Regulation and Competitiveness in the 1990s
A Regulation Approach framework has been adopted to analyse the very rapid period of change in social security policy since the late 1980s. It is argued that the changes can be explained in terms of a number of regulatory dilemmas which emerged or were intensified under neo-liberal capital accumulation. Some of the regulatory dilemmas - high levels of economic inactivity, inflationary pressures consequent to higher employment and low levels of wa…
Employment and Support Allowance: Capability, personalization and disabled people in the UK
In 2008 the Employment and Support Allowance was introduced in the UK as the income replacement benefit for disabled people. In this paper we focus upon the reasons for its introduction, the notions of disability and the two main ideas – capability and personalization – that provide the framework for its operation. The paper engages with the arguments put forward by the UK's government that the Employment and Support Allowance will enable disable…
From Incapacity Benefit to Employment and Support Allowance: Social sorting, sickness and impairment, and social security
This article focuses upon the introduction of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) as a replacement for the main income replacement benefit, Incapacity Benefit (IB), for sick and/or disabled people in Britain. The article argues that the process of claiming ESA, a process that is dependent upon medicalised perceptions of capability to work and which is aimed at managing the perceived economic and social costs of sick and impaired people, is a m…
Privatizing employment services in Britain
This paper focuses upon the privatization of Britain's employment services. It explores the extent to which the private sector is involved in the delivery of state-funded employment services, and the reasons why its involvement is to be extended in the future. The paper examines the catalyst — the Freud review of work-related social security policies — for extending private sector involvement in employment services before going on to critically e…
The Freud Report on the future of welfare to work: Some critical reflections
In December 2006 the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions announced a review of welfare to work policies in Britain. This was led by the investment banker, David Freud who reported in March 2007. This paper examines the report, particularly focusing upon broad issues — relationships between unemployment, worklessness and capitalism and gender issues — that are central to understanding the report's analysis and recommendations. It is argued th…
Social Security Policy and Vindictiveness
This paper uses the work of Jock YOUNG (2002 , 2003 ) on the emergence of vindictiveness in late modern society to examine two recent developments - the withdrawal, in certain circumstances, of Housing Benefit from those people evicted for 'anti-social' behaviour and the proposed introduction of a Treatment Allowance for 'problem drug users' - in social security policy. The paper argues that while since the development of collective responses to …
New Labour', welfare reform and the reserve army of labour
This paper locates 'new Labour's' welfare reform agenda in the workfarist shift of recent social policy. In this context it explores the aim of 'new labour's' welfare reform programme to reconstitute the reserve army of labour so that it is able to fulfil its role in managing economic stability. The emphasis is upon ensuring that labour is as cheap as possible for capital to employ through various direct and indirect wage subsidies and requiring …
Employment and Support Allowance, the ‘summer budget’ and less eligible disabled people
In the first UK budget by a Conservative Government for 18 years, £13 billion per annum savings in social security spending by 2020/21 were announced. Of these, 4.9% (£640 million per annum, and up to £900 million in the years after 2020) is to come from the withdrawal from April 2017 of the work-related component of the Employment and Support Allowance. This means that new claimants will be worse off by £29.05 per week (2015/16 figures) than wou…
Personalised conditionality: Observations on active proletarianisation in late modern Britain
This paper examines the development of the idea 'personalised conditionality' in social security policy in Britain through the report, Realising Potential, commissioned by the last of the 1997-2010 Labour governments and the documents and policies of the coalition government formed after the 2010 general election. Using the idea of active proletarianisation from Offe (1984), the paper argues that 'personalised conditionality' is part of a long an…
A Note on Computer Searches of Newspapers
Online technology now provides the press-focused social science researcher with an accessible and fast means of selecting newspaper articles for analysis. Taking examples from their experiences of using both hard copy newspapers and online output, the authors argue that whilst computer searches of newspapers are often appropriate, there are problems with the current technology. In particular, the relationships between graphics, the spatial locati…
Disability and Social (In)Security: Emotions, Contradictions of ‘Inclusion’ and Employment and Support Allowance
The focus of this article is on the ways in which emotions are engaged in the discursive construction and treatment of disabled people in receipt of social security benefits. The article draws upon the literature related to the social importance of emotions and that concerned with moral boundary drawing. It argues that the evocation of emotional reactions is crucial in understanding the ways in which changes to out-of-work benefits for disabled p…
Social Protest in 2011: Material and Cultural Aspects of Economic Inequalities
The wave of social protest that swept across England in August 2011 has predominantly been explained by political elites through appeals to various approaches that have in common individualistic frameworks of reference. Issues related to the material condition of society are either little analysed or, among the political elite, ruled out as an explanation of the protests. However, it is clear from both the historical literature on social protest …
Living wages and the ‘making work pay’ strategy
Poverty among workers is a perennial problem. Recently there has been much interest in the idea of living wages. As mechanisms to increase wages above the ‘poverty line’, living wages present an alternative to New Labour’s ‘making work pay’ strategy; a combination of minimum wage regulation and means-tested, in-work relief. Through a comparison of living wages and the ‘making work pay’ strategy this paper critically examines both by focusing upon…
The National Childcare Strategy: The social regulation of lone mothers as a gendered reserve army of labour
This paper analyses the introduction of the National Childcare Strategy. It argues, in the context of workfarism and through a new evaluation of the 'women as reserve army' thesis, that the National Childcare Strategy can be understood as one of a number of administrative mechanisms in New Labour's welfare reform agenda that aims to release lone mothers from social reproduction, in order to increase their effectiveness at competing for paid emplo…
Ending reassessment for employment and support allowance for some disabled people in the UK
In October 2016 the newly appointed UK Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Damian Green, announced that some disabled people receiving Employment and Support Allowance would not face reassessment for their financial support to continue. This article critically engages with this announcement in the context of the publication of Improving Lives. The Work, Health and Disability Green Paper shortly afterwards
From wage supplements to a ‘living wage’? A commentary on the problems of predistribution in Britain’s summer budget of 2015
This commentary focuses upon two developments – cuts to wage supplements and an increase in the National Minimum Wage – announced in the first full Conservative government budget in Britain for 18 years. The commentary analyses these through the concept of predistribution and critiques of it. The commentary argues that the two developments can be understood as a weak version of predistribution that will reproduce and deepen class and gender inequ…
Atos Healthcare withdraws from the Work Capability Assessment: A comment
In March 2014 Atos Healthcare withdrew a year early from its contract to provide the UK’s health assessment – the Work Capability Assessment (WCA) – that is supposed to sort disabled people into administrative categories according to their adjudged capability to do paid work. This move was welcomed by political elites, with, for example, UK Coalition Government Minister for Disabled People Mike Penning using it to criticise previous Labour govern…
The Allen Report: Class, gender and disadvantage
In this article we focus on the Allen Report, which, along with other documents, is helping to guide the development of the United Kingdom’s coalition government’s policies in relation to child poverty and social mobility. Drawing on empirical research projects with social work service users and practitioners, we take a critical approach to the way in which the Allen Report locates the disadvantages faced by working-class children in the parentin…
A commentary on resistance to the UK’s Work Experience programme: Capitalism, exploitation and wage work
In this commentary we focus upon resistance to the UK’s Work Experience programme that aims to help the young unemployed secure paid employment. The programme hit the news headlines in February 2012 when the group, Right to Work, forced concessions from the UK’s Coalition government that removed sanctions for Work Experience conscripts who left their placement after a week. The paper critically engages with the Right to Work’s demand for ‘real jo…
Localism and poverty in the United Kingdom: The case of Local Welfare Assistance
This article focuses on the UK’s Coalition Government’s plans to abolish the discretionary Social Fund and replace it, at least in part, with Local Welfare Assistance (LWA). The article examines this proposal by locating LWA in debates about localism, the idea of which in policy terms unites the two political parties that make up the Coalition government. The article explores the Coalition government’s approach to localism and debates about it, a…
‘A Murderous ‘Underclass’? The Press Reporting of Sexually Motivated Murder
The ‘underclass’ is widely held by commentators of the Right to be responsible for a host of social problems, including violent crime. This paper shows how in the reporting of sexually motivated murder in a sample of nine British newspapers for one complete year (1992), the image constructed is one where unemployed and other marginalised men are portrayed as the main perpetrators of sexual violence. This, the authors argue, hampers our understand…
Ethnicity, the search for rapists and the press
Media reporting of rape continues to provoke concern. This article focuses on the press reporting of the discovery and search for alleged rapists. On examining nine British newspapers for one complete year (1992), a serious distortion in the media reporting of ethnicity emerges at this early stage of the criminal process. While there is an over-representation of minority ethnic men accused of rape coming to the notice of the police, the cases ide…
A Note on Computer Searches of Newspapers
Online technology now provides the press-focused social science researcher with an accessible and fast means of selecting newspaper articles for analysis. Taking examples from their experiences of using both hard copy newspapers and online output, the authors argue that whilst computer searches of newspapers are often appropriate, there are problems with the current technology. In particular, the relationships between graphics, the spatial locati…
Bigamy: Neither Love Nor Marriage, but a Threat to the Nation
In a computer search of 18 national newspapers over a three-year period (1993-1995) 420 mentions of bigamy were identified. 110 items (or 26 per cent) referred to 26 current criminal cases involving bigamy. Seven cases attracted 70 per cent of the coverage. The comments of the presiding judge were widely reported in five of these cases together with titillating detail. Two other cases included comments by judges. Using Phoenix's (1996) distinctio…
Market Workfare: Social Security, Social Regulation and Competitiveness in the 1990s
A Regulation Approach framework has been adopted to analyse the very rapid period of change in social security policy since the late 1980s. It is argued that the changes can be explained in terms of a number of regulatory dilemmas which emerged or were intensified under neo-liberal capital accumulation. Some of the regulatory dilemmas - high levels of economic inactivity, inflationary pressures consequent to higher employment and low levels of wa…
Modernizing Social Security? Labour and its Welfare‐to‐work Strategy
The Work Connection: The Role of Social Security in British Economic Regulation
The authors use regulation to explain the antecedents to current welfare developments in Britain. From discussion of the 'Speenhamland System', the struggle for Family Allowance and a National Minimum
New Labour', welfare reform and the reserve army of labour
This paper locates 'new Labour's' welfare reform agenda in the workfarist shift of recent social policy. In this context it explores the aim of 'new labour's' welfare reform programme to reconstitute the reserve army of labour so that it is able to fulfil its role in managing economic stability. The emphasis is upon ensuring that labour is as cheap as possible for capital to employ through various direct and indirect wage subsidies and requiring …
Care leavers, financial support and the 2000 Children (Leaving Care) Act
We examine those aspects of the 2000 Children (Leaving Care) Act that have placed a duty on local authorities to provide financial support for care leavers from October 2001. It is argued that the good intentions of the Act may be eroded by inherent problems in the new system of support because it is structured through reference to social security policies that are widely held to be problematic for all young people needing to claim benefit
Advertising social security fraud
This article analyses the representation of social security fraud in the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) television advertising campaign between 2000 and 2004. The article discusses the campaign in the context of New Labour’s concerns with social security fraud and observes that the ostensible aim of the television advertisements was to deter social security fraud. The article then moves on to discuss the difficulties of the advertis…
Disabled people, the reserve army of labour and welfare reform
This paper is concerned with explaining why in contemporary society there has been a number of changes to income maintenance and labour market policy for disabled people. Taking a regulation approach theoretical framework it engages with the debate about whether disabled people can be considered to be part of the reserve army of labour. Rejecting previous broad‐brush approaches that seem to suggest that all disabled people are part of the reserve…
Living wages and the ‘making work pay’ strategy
Poverty among workers is a perennial problem. Recently there has been much interest in the idea of living wages. As mechanisms to increase wages above the ‘poverty line’, living wages present an alternative to New Labour’s ‘making work pay’ strategy; a combination of minimum wage regulation and means-tested, in-work relief. Through a comparison of living wages and the ‘making work pay’ strategy this paper critically examines both by focusing upon…
The National Childcare Strategy: The social regulation of lone mothers as a gendered reserve army of labour
This paper analyses the introduction of the National Childcare Strategy. It argues, in the context of workfarism and through a new evaluation of the 'women as reserve army' thesis, that the National Childcare Strategy can be understood as one of a number of administrative mechanisms in New Labour's welfare reform agenda that aims to release lone mothers from social reproduction, in order to increase their effectiveness at competing for paid emplo…
Social security, employment and Incapacity Benefit: Critical reflections on A new deal for welfare
In January 2006 New Labour published a Green Paper on welfare reform, A new deal for welfare: empowering people to work. Following a consultation period the 2006 Welfare Reform Bill was published in July 2006. The main concern of the Green Paper was with Incapacity Benefit and the people who claim it. This paper critically engages with the proposals outlined in the Green Paper and the subsequent Bill. Focusing upon the social security and labour …
Sure Start and the `re-authorization' of Section 47 child protection practices
In a recent Sure Start evaluation report (Barnes et al. 2006) it was argued that an increase in Section 47 enquiries and registrations on the Child Protection Register in Sure Start Local Programme Areas was an achievement, reflecting better and/or earlier identification of need and enhanced collaboration between agencies to identify and support families. This paper critically engages with these conclusions, arguing that they are in danger of enc…
The Freud Report on the future of welfare to work: Some critical reflections
In December 2006 the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions announced a review of welfare to work policies in Britain. This was led by the investment banker, David Freud who reported in March 2007. This paper examines the report, particularly focusing upon broad issues — relationships between unemployment, worklessness and capitalism and gender issues — that are central to understanding the report's analysis and recommendations. It is argued th…
A living wage for London
Following the 2004 London mayoral election, the successful candidate, Ken Livingstone, set up a Living Wage Unit to produce a figure for a living wage for London and to push for its implementation across a number of London-wide public employers. This article critically examines the way in which the living wage for London has been calculated and the assumptions on which it is premised. The article argues that while the Greater London Authority sho…
Loaning Supplementary Benefit and the Introduction of the Social Fund
This paper discusses an episode in social security policy making that has until now remained unexplored. This is the review, at the request of then Labour Secretary of State for Social Services, Richard Crossman MP, in the latter months of 1969 and early 1970 into the possibility of introducing loans to the Supplementary Benefit system as a replacement for some exceptional needs and exceptional circumstances payments. The paper examines files hel…
Retrenching Incapacity Benefit: Employment Support Allowance and Paid Work
In October 2008 in the UK Incapacity Benefit (IB) (the main income replacement benefit for sick and disabled claimants) was replaced by the Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) for new claimants. Drawing upon recent work on the retrenchment of welfare benefits and services this paper examines the context for the changes, the marketisation of the job placement services for ESA claimants and the extension of conditionality to sick and disabled be…
Privatizing employment services in Britain
This paper focuses upon the privatization of Britain's employment services. It explores the extent to which the private sector is involved in the delivery of state-funded employment services, and the reasons why its involvement is to be extended in the future. The paper examines the catalyst — the Freud review of work-related social security policies — for extending private sector involvement in employment services before going on to critically e…
The third way: A compromise of the Left? New Labour, the Independent Labour Party and making work pay
The third way is commonly held to mean a compromise between 'old' Labour and the New Right: social justice via free market mechanisms and practices. However, before this use of the term, now Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was using the term to describe a compromise between different factions of the Left. This article explores this interpretation of the third way by examining the context – an analysis of the Independent Labour Party's living wage p…
Abolishing the 10p tax band: Some observations
In his last Budget as the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer in 2007, Gordon Brown abolished the 10p starting rate of income tax. This was to prove to be a controversial move and one that was of significance for income maintenance policy. This article focuses on this significance by examining the competing economic, political and social objectives that framed the abolition of the 10p tax band, the messages that its abolition sent to low paid childl…
From Incapacity Benefit to Employment and Support Allowance: Social sorting, sickness and impairment, and social security
This article focuses upon the introduction of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) as a replacement for the main income replacement benefit, Incapacity Benefit (IB), for sick and/or disabled people in Britain. The article argues that the process of claiming ESA, a process that is dependent upon medicalised perceptions of capability to work and which is aimed at managing the perceived economic and social costs of sick and impaired people, is a m…
Social Security Policy and Vindictiveness
This paper uses the work of Jock YOUNG (2002 , 2003 ) on the emergence of vindictiveness in late modern society to examine two recent developments - the withdrawal, in certain circumstances, of Housing Benefit from those people evicted for 'anti-social' behaviour and the proposed introduction of a Treatment Allowance for 'problem drug users' - in social security policy. The paper argues that while since the development of collective responses to …
Cutting social security and tax credit spending
Since being elected in May 2010, the coalition government in the United Kingdom has announced spending cuts that by 2014/15, it is estimated, will save the state £81 billion per annum. It announced the cuts in two exercises – an ‘emergency Budget’ in June 2010 and a Comprehensive Spending Review in October 2010. In this paper we focus on one aspect of the cuts – those related to social security and tax credit spending. The paper examines the scal…
Economics (39 works) · Political science (39 works) · Law (36 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (34 works) · Sociology (34 works) · Employment and Welfare Studies (27 works) · Law (25 works) · Labour economics (21 works) · Politics (20 works) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (19 works)