The Transformation of British Welfare Policy

UCL Uncovering Politics · Mar 10, 2022 · 43m

A new book out this month by our colleague Tom O’Grady begins with a remarkable quotation from a UN Special Rapporteur writing in 2018 about welfare reforms in the UK:

‘British compassion’ – the rapporteur said – ‘has been replaced by a punitive, mean-spirited and often callous approach apparently designed to impose a rigid order on the lives of those least capable of coping, and elevate the goal of enforcing blind compliance over a genuine concern to improve the well-being of those at the lowest economic levels of British society.’

In his book, Tom argues that, over the past 30 years, the…