Neville Harris
Biographic Data
| ID | 4239072 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Neville Harris |
| GIVEN NAMES | Neville |
| FAMILY NAME | Harris |
| SIGNATURE | HARRIS N |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Liverpool |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5383-2191 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 37 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 25 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Children, Families and Social Security
In The Disinherited Family , published in 1924, Eleanor Rathbone argued powerfully for ‘family endowment’, involving the direction of collective resources towards family support via state‐provided family allowances. This ground‐breaking work influenced many, including the architect of Britain's postwar welfare state, William Beveridge, who included universal family allowances in his plan. Rathbone's central argument was that society would benefit…
Ensuring rights matter
In recent years, both international law (notably the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) and domestic legislation have led to a new emphasis on children’s rights in the field of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in England and additional support needs (ASN) in Scotland. Scotland has moved ahead of England in extending these rights, but research has poin…
Autonomy, education and the rights of children with special and additional support needs and disabilities in England and Scotland
Legislation enacted in 2014 in England and 2016 in Scotland attempts to boost the rights of children and young people with special and additional support needs in the context of education, particularly with regard to opportunities for their participation in decision-making and local planning, with governments in both nations claiming that the new measures place the UK at the forefront internationally on this issue. There are, however, key differe…
The rights of children and young people under special educational needs legislation in England
In this article we consider the rights of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities in England, introduced under the Children and Families Act 2014, within the context of the wider reforms made by the Act. Drawing primarily on key informant interviews conducted as part of an ESRC project on Autonomy, Rights and Children with Special Needs: A New Paradigm? (ES/P002641/1), and making reference to the international fr…
Ensuring the Right to Education for Roma Children
Access to public education systems has tended to be below normative levels where Roma children are concerned. Various long-standing social, cultural, and institutional factors lie behind the lower levels of engagement and achievement of Roma children in education, relative to many others, which is reflective of the general lack of integration of their families in mainstream society. The risks to Roma children’s educational interests are well reco…
Demagnetisation of Social Security and Health Care for Migrants to the UK
Over the past two decades, starting with the social security ‘habitual residence’ test, UK governments have maintained a consistent policy of restricting the access of migrants to welfare benefits and public health care. It has represented a response to increased levels of inward migration flow, including anticipated increases arising from enlarged European Union (EU) membership, and the supposed ‘magnetic pull’ of UK welfare and health care syst…
Complexity in the law and administration of social security
This article analyses the problem of complexity in relation to the law and structure of the modern welfare (social security) system and its impact on administration, which has represented a significant driver for simplification reforms in the UK. The article outlines diverse conceptual and methodological approaches to the definition of complexity. It argues that despite the difficulties which complexity presents, attention should also be paid to …
Welfare Reform and the Shifting Threshold of Support for Disabled People
Among the highly significant changes to the benefits system made by the W elfare R eform A ct 2012 is provision for a new disability benefit, personal independence payment ( PIP ). PIP is replacing disability living allowance ( DLA ), received by three million people, as the principal form of state financial support towards disability‐related care and mobility costs for those of working age. The legislation, including regulations prescribing a ne…
Local Authorities and the Accountability Gap in a Fragmenting Schools System
Reforms to the English education system under the UK 's coalition government are building on the so‐called ‘schools revolution’ that previous L abour governments began through legislation increasing both schools' autonomy from local authorities and the system's diversity. Growing numbers of state‐funded schools have converted to academies outside local authority control, particularly since the A cademies A ct 2010, while opportunities have emerge…
Dispute resolution in additional and special educational needs
The UK Government is keen to encourage the use of mediation, rather than court or tribunal, as the best means of resolving disputes between citizen and state on the grounds that legal proceedings are costly, lengthy and stressful. The policy of proportionate dispute resolution appears to be particularly applicable to the field of special educational needs (SEN), where both mediation and tribunal are available as dispute resolution mechanisms. How…
Conditional Rights, Benefit Reform, and Drug Users
United Kingdom government policy to increase social security claimants' entry to the labour market through conditions attached to unemployed, sickness and incapacity benefits now includes additional measures to activate particular groups such as lone parents and drug users. The latter are a prime target because of their high level of dependency on benefits and because social security rules are seen as having the potential to modify the behaviour …
Playing Catch-up in the Schoolyard? Children and Young People's 'Voice' and Education Rights in the UK
This article aims to assess cross-UK progress in the recognition of the independent education rights of children and young people of school age. There is an increasing divergence between the separate education systems of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, which has become more pronounced after the devolution of power that began just over a decade ago and is accentuated by the sheer volume of legislative activity and policy developmen…
Complexity, Law and Social Security in the United Kingdom
The UK has a very complex system of interrelated, rule-based social security benefits and tax credits which are highly conditional and targeted. The conditions of entitlement and provision for the assessment of need have been bound up in an intricate legal framework. Rules have enabled governments to adapt and develop schemes to meet social needs while controlling the delivery of welfare from the centre, but the system, its components and its leg…
Empowerment and State Education
Two separate discourses surround the involvement of parents in their children's education in schools. One is concerned with what is often referred to as ‘parent power,’ based on the conferment on parents of rights to a degree of choice and participation in respect of their children's education, a feature of legislative changes to the governance of state education that started with the Education Act 1980 and which, in part, rests on consumerist an…
Social Security Law in Context
The social security system of Great Britain has reached a crossroads, following the election of a Labour Government promising a ‘New Age’ of welfare and seemingly prepared to ‘think the unthinkable’ on welfare reform, at a time when public expenditure on welfare benefits has reached nearly £100 billion per annum. In 1985 the Conservative’s Green Paper on social security reform announced that the benefits system had ‘lost its way’. Attempts were m…
Unmarried cohabiting couples and Social Security in Great Britain
This article aims to take afresh look at the ‘cohabitation rule’ in British social security law. Given the changed social context in which the rule now operates, with cohabitation outside marriage increasingly prevalent and calls for legal recognition of ‘non-traditional’ family types growing, it is important to re-assess both the rationale for the rule itself and the way that relationships are categorized under it. It will be shown that over twe…
The Education Act 1993 and Local Administration of Education
Parents as ‘Consumers’ of Education in England and Wales and the Netherlands
The legal context to the development of public service consumerism in many European states has included the introduction of important rights for the users of a range of services. This article examines the‘consumer’ rights enjoyed by parents and/or their children in relation to educational provision. Comparing relevant legal developments in two jurisdictions, England and Wales and The Netherlands, it examines these education rights in relation to …
Local Complaints Procedures under the Education Reform Act 1988
This article discusses the findings of research by the author into the operation of local education complaints procedures established under section 23 of the Education Reform Act 1988. The procedures lie squarely in the tradition of recent reforms designed to foster greater accountability among education providers to the consumers of the education service, and in theory they offer an important mechanism for redress of grievance in respect of diss…
Challenging the Vires of Social Security Regulations
Youth, citizenship and welfare
The central theme of this paper is the question of how the welfare state should deal with young people. It begins by looking at the concept of “citizenship,” both generally and more specifically in relation to the notion of social citizenship for young people. It focuses on the argument that poverty, by hindering full social and economic participation, undermines the citizenship of economically vulnerable groups, including young people and women.…
Discipline in Schools
The Elton Committee's investigation into school discipline was prompted by considerable public and parliamentary disquiet about indiscipline and bullying in schools. The Committee's Report, published in 1989, contains a review of current practice and legal changes relating to school discipline which occurred during the 1980s–including the removal of teachers' authority to inflict corporal punishment in most schools and new requirements on exclusi…
Social Security, Student Loans and Access to Education
The issue of student loans has been under public discussion for some time, but another change in their finances which affects many of them has not been debated so much in public — and that is the removal of their housing benefit ... It is very unfortunate that, just as the wish of students to participate in higher education is growing, they should be discouraged in this particular way
Education by Right? Breach of the Duty to Provide ‘Sufficient’ Schools
Raising the Minimum Age of Entitlement to Income Support
Throughout the past fifteen years a relatively low demand for youth labour has continued to interrupt the traditional progress of school leavers into apprenticeship or employment in Britain and most other western countries. Although has declined in Britain in recent years (at least in official terms) the percentage fall in youth has been matched by an almost equal percentage rise in Youth Training Scheme participation.1 For young people seeking b…
Demagnetisation of Social Security and Health Care for Migrants to the UK
Over the past two decades, starting with the social security ‘habitual residence’ test, UK governments have maintained a consistent policy of restricting the access of migrants to welfare benefits and public health care. It has represented a response to increased levels of inward migration flow, including anticipated increases arising from enlarged European Union (EU) membership, and the supposed ‘magnetic pull’ of UK welfare and health care syst…
Playing Catch-up in the Schoolyard? Children and Young People's 'Voice' and Education Rights in the UK
This article aims to assess cross-UK progress in the recognition of the independent education rights of children and young people of school age. There is an increasing divergence between the separate education systems of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, which has become more pronounced after the devolution of power that began just over a decade ago and is accentuated by the sheer volume of legislative activity and policy developmen…
Complexity in the law and administration of social security
This article analyses the problem of complexity in relation to the law and structure of the modern welfare (social security) system and its impact on administration, which has represented a significant driver for simplification reforms in the UK. The article outlines diverse conceptual and methodological approaches to the definition of complexity. It argues that despite the difficulties which complexity presents, attention should also be paid to …
Conditional Rights, Benefit Reform, and Drug Users
United Kingdom government policy to increase social security claimants' entry to the labour market through conditions attached to unemployed, sickness and incapacity benefits now includes additional measures to activate particular groups such as lone parents and drug users. The latter are a prime target because of their high level of dependency on benefits and because social security rules are seen as having the potential to modify the behaviour …
Social Security and the Transition to Adulthood
Social security provision for young people has been cut back by a succession of reforms since 1980 culminating in the almost complete withdrawal of income support from 16 and 17 year olds by the Social Security Act 1988. Conservative government policy seems to indicate a desire that families assume greater responsibility for young people until either they find work or reach their mid-twenties. It is assumed that until young unemployed people reac…
Autonomy, education and the rights of children with special and additional support needs and disabilities in England and Scotland
Legislation enacted in 2014 in England and 2016 in Scotland attempts to boost the rights of children and young people with special and additional support needs in the context of education, particularly with regard to opportunities for their participation in decision-making and local planning, with governments in both nations claiming that the new measures place the UK at the forefront internationally on this issue. There are, however, key differe…
Ensuring the Right to Education for Roma Children
Access to public education systems has tended to be below normative levels where Roma children are concerned. Various long-standing social, cultural, and institutional factors lie behind the lower levels of engagement and achievement of Roma children in education, relative to many others, which is reflective of the general lack of integration of their families in mainstream society. The risks to Roma children’s educational interests are well reco…
Dispute resolution in additional and special educational needs
The UK Government is keen to encourage the use of mediation, rather than court or tribunal, as the best means of resolving disputes between citizen and state on the grounds that legal proceedings are costly, lengthy and stressful. The policy of proportionate dispute resolution appears to be particularly applicable to the field of special educational needs (SEN), where both mediation and tribunal are available as dispute resolution mechanisms. How…
Discipline in Schools
The Elton Committee's investigation into school discipline was prompted by considerable public and parliamentary disquiet about indiscipline and bullying in schools. The Committee's Report, published in 1989, contains a review of current practice and legal changes relating to school discipline which occurred during the 1980s–including the removal of teachers' authority to inflict corporal punishment in most schools and new requirements on exclusi…
The rights of children and young people under special educational needs legislation in England
In this article we consider the rights of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities in England, introduced under the Children and Families Act 2014, within the context of the wider reforms made by the Act. Drawing primarily on key informant interviews conducted as part of an ESRC project on Autonomy, Rights and Children with Special Needs: A New Paradigm? (ES/P002641/1), and making reference to the international fr…
Welfare Reform and the Shifting Threshold of Support for Disabled People
Among the highly significant changes to the benefits system made by the W elfare R eform A ct 2012 is provision for a new disability benefit, personal independence payment ( PIP ). PIP is replacing disability living allowance ( DLA ), received by three million people, as the principal form of state financial support towards disability‐related care and mobility costs for those of working age. The legislation, including regulations prescribing a ne…
Local Authorities and the Accountability Gap in a Fragmenting Schools System
Reforms to the English education system under the UK 's coalition government are building on the so‐called ‘schools revolution’ that previous L abour governments began through legislation increasing both schools' autonomy from local authorities and the system's diversity. Growing numbers of state‐funded schools have converted to academies outside local authority control, particularly since the A cademies A ct 2010, while opportunities have emerge…
Empowerment and State Education
Two separate discourses surround the involvement of parents in their children's education in schools. One is concerned with what is often referred to as ‘parent power,’ based on the conferment on parents of rights to a degree of choice and participation in respect of their children's education, a feature of legislative changes to the governance of state education that started with the Education Act 1980 and which, in part, rests on consumerist an…
Unmarried cohabiting couples and Social Security in Great Britain
This article aims to take afresh look at the ‘cohabitation rule’ in British social security law. Given the changed social context in which the rule now operates, with cohabitation outside marriage increasingly prevalent and calls for legal recognition of ‘non-traditional’ family types growing, it is important to re-assess both the rationale for the rule itself and the way that relationships are categorized under it. It will be shown that over twe…
Social Security, Student Loans and Access to Education
The issue of student loans has been under public discussion for some time, but another change in their finances which affects many of them has not been debated so much in public — and that is the removal of their housing benefit ... It is very unfortunate that, just as the wish of students to participate in higher education is growing, they should be discouraged in this particular way
Education by Right? Breach of the Duty to Provide ‘Sufficient’ Schools
Raising the Minimum Age of Entitlement to Income Support
Throughout the past fifteen years a relatively low demand for youth labour has continued to interrupt the traditional progress of school leavers into apprenticeship or employment in Britain and most other western countries. Although has declined in Britain in recent years (at least in official terms) the percentage fall in youth has been matched by an almost equal percentage rise in Youth Training Scheme participation.1 For young people seeking b…
Raising the Minimum Age of Entitlement to Income Support
Throughout the past fifteen years a relatively low demand for youth labour has continued to interrupt the traditional progress of school leavers into apprenticeship or employment in Britain and most other western countries. Although has declined in Britain in recent years (at least in official terms) the percentage fall in youth has been matched by an almost equal percentage rise in Youth Training Scheme participation.1 For young people seeking b…
Social Security and the Transition to Adulthood
Social security provision for young people has been cut back by a succession of reforms since 1980 culminating in the almost complete withdrawal of income support from 16 and 17 year olds by the Social Security Act 1988. Conservative government policy seems to indicate a desire that families assume greater responsibility for young people until either they find work or reach their mid-twenties. It is assumed that until young unemployed people reac…
Education by Right? Breach of the Duty to Provide ‘Sufficient’ Schools
Discipline in Schools
The Elton Committee's investigation into school discipline was prompted by considerable public and parliamentary disquiet about indiscipline and bullying in schools. The Committee's Report, published in 1989, contains a review of current practice and legal changes relating to school discipline which occurred during the 1980s–including the removal of teachers' authority to inflict corporal punishment in most schools and new requirements on exclusi…
Social Security, Student Loans and Access to Education
The issue of student loans has been under public discussion for some time, but another change in their finances which affects many of them has not been debated so much in public — and that is the removal of their housing benefit ... It is very unfortunate that, just as the wish of students to participate in higher education is growing, they should be discouraged in this particular way
Youth, citizenship and welfare
The central theme of this paper is the question of how the welfare state should deal with young people. It begins by looking at the concept of “citizenship,” both generally and more specifically in relation to the notion of social citizenship for young people. It focuses on the argument that poverty, by hindering full social and economic participation, undermines the citizenship of economically vulnerable groups, including young people and women.…
Parents as ‘Consumers’ of Education in England and Wales and the Netherlands
The legal context to the development of public service consumerism in many European states has included the introduction of important rights for the users of a range of services. This article examines the‘consumer’ rights enjoyed by parents and/or their children in relation to educational provision. Comparing relevant legal developments in two jurisdictions, England and Wales and The Netherlands, it examines these education rights in relation to …
Local Complaints Procedures under the Education Reform Act 1988
This article discusses the findings of research by the author into the operation of local education complaints procedures established under section 23 of the Education Reform Act 1988. The procedures lie squarely in the tradition of recent reforms designed to foster greater accountability among education providers to the consumers of the education service, and in theory they offer an important mechanism for redress of grievance in respect of diss…
Challenging the Vires of Social Security Regulations
The Education Act 1993 and Local Administration of Education
Unmarried cohabiting couples and Social Security in Great Britain
This article aims to take afresh look at the ‘cohabitation rule’ in British social security law. Given the changed social context in which the rule now operates, with cohabitation outside marriage increasingly prevalent and calls for legal recognition of ‘non-traditional’ family types growing, it is important to re-assess both the rationale for the rule itself and the way that relationships are categorized under it. It will be shown that over twe…
Social Security Law in Context
The social security system of Great Britain has reached a crossroads, following the election of a Labour Government promising a ‘New Age’ of welfare and seemingly prepared to ‘think the unthinkable’ on welfare reform, at a time when public expenditure on welfare benefits has reached nearly £100 billion per annum. In 1985 the Conservative’s Green Paper on social security reform announced that the benefits system had ‘lost its way’. Attempts were m…
Empowerment and State Education
Two separate discourses surround the involvement of parents in their children's education in schools. One is concerned with what is often referred to as ‘parent power,’ based on the conferment on parents of rights to a degree of choice and participation in respect of their children's education, a feature of legislative changes to the governance of state education that started with the Education Act 1980 and which, in part, rests on consumerist an…
Complexity, Law and Social Security in the United Kingdom
The UK has a very complex system of interrelated, rule-based social security benefits and tax credits which are highly conditional and targeted. The conditions of entitlement and provision for the assessment of need have been bound up in an intricate legal framework. Rules have enabled governments to adapt and develop schemes to meet social needs while controlling the delivery of welfare from the centre, but the system, its components and its leg…
Playing Catch-up in the Schoolyard? Children and Young People's 'Voice' and Education Rights in the UK
This article aims to assess cross-UK progress in the recognition of the independent education rights of children and young people of school age. There is an increasing divergence between the separate education systems of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, which has become more pronounced after the devolution of power that began just over a decade ago and is accentuated by the sheer volume of legislative activity and policy developmen…
Dispute resolution in additional and special educational needs
The UK Government is keen to encourage the use of mediation, rather than court or tribunal, as the best means of resolving disputes between citizen and state on the grounds that legal proceedings are costly, lengthy and stressful. The policy of proportionate dispute resolution appears to be particularly applicable to the field of special educational needs (SEN), where both mediation and tribunal are available as dispute resolution mechanisms. How…
Conditional Rights, Benefit Reform, and Drug Users
United Kingdom government policy to increase social security claimants' entry to the labour market through conditions attached to unemployed, sickness and incapacity benefits now includes additional measures to activate particular groups such as lone parents and drug users. The latter are a prime target because of their high level of dependency on benefits and because social security rules are seen as having the potential to modify the behaviour …
Local Authorities and the Accountability Gap in a Fragmenting Schools System
Reforms to the English education system under the UK 's coalition government are building on the so‐called ‘schools revolution’ that previous L abour governments began through legislation increasing both schools' autonomy from local authorities and the system's diversity. Growing numbers of state‐funded schools have converted to academies outside local authority control, particularly since the A cademies A ct 2010, while opportunities have emerge…
Welfare Reform and the Shifting Threshold of Support for Disabled People
Among the highly significant changes to the benefits system made by the W elfare R eform A ct 2012 is provision for a new disability benefit, personal independence payment ( PIP ). PIP is replacing disability living allowance ( DLA ), received by three million people, as the principal form of state financial support towards disability‐related care and mobility costs for those of working age. The legislation, including regulations prescribing a ne…
Complexity in the law and administration of social security
This article analyses the problem of complexity in relation to the law and structure of the modern welfare (social security) system and its impact on administration, which has represented a significant driver for simplification reforms in the UK. The article outlines diverse conceptual and methodological approaches to the definition of complexity. It argues that despite the difficulties which complexity presents, attention should also be paid to …
Demagnetisation of Social Security and Health Care for Migrants to the UK
Over the past two decades, starting with the social security ‘habitual residence’ test, UK governments have maintained a consistent policy of restricting the access of migrants to welfare benefits and public health care. It has represented a response to increased levels of inward migration flow, including anticipated increases arising from enlarged European Union (EU) membership, and the supposed ‘magnetic pull’ of UK welfare and health care syst…
Ensuring the Right to Education for Roma Children
Access to public education systems has tended to be below normative levels where Roma children are concerned. Various long-standing social, cultural, and institutional factors lie behind the lower levels of engagement and achievement of Roma children in education, relative to many others, which is reflective of the general lack of integration of their families in mainstream society. The risks to Roma children’s educational interests are well reco…
The rights of children and young people under special educational needs legislation in England
In this article we consider the rights of children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities in England, introduced under the Children and Families Act 2014, within the context of the wider reforms made by the Act. Drawing primarily on key informant interviews conducted as part of an ESRC project on Autonomy, Rights and Children with Special Needs: A New Paradigm? (ES/P002641/1), and making reference to the international fr…
Autonomy, education and the rights of children with special and additional support needs and disabilities in England and Scotland
Legislation enacted in 2014 in England and 2016 in Scotland attempts to boost the rights of children and young people with special and additional support needs in the context of education, particularly with regard to opportunities for their participation in decision-making and local planning, with governments in both nations claiming that the new measures place the UK at the forefront internationally on this issue. There are, however, key differe…
Ensuring rights matter
In recent years, both international law (notably the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities) and domestic legislation have led to a new emphasis on children’s rights in the field of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) in England and additional support needs (ASN) in Scotland. Scotland has moved ahead of England in extending these rights, but research has poin…
Political science (25 works) · Law (21 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Law (14 works) · Economics (13 works) · Public Administration (10 works) · Social security (10 works) · Public Administration (9 works) · Politics (8 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (8 works)