Introduction

Never let a good crisis go to waste. That would seem to be the logic of the Conservative-led Coalition which, having come to office in May 2010, has embarked on a profound restructuring of the welfare state and the public sector more broadly. While there is much continuity with previous New Labour policy, there are important differences and the scale of change envisaged is substantial. Public expenditure across the board is being drastically reduced and the welfare system reshaped. Citizens are being left to rely more on themselves and an ambiguously defined ‘Big Society’, while being required to demonstrate that they are sufficiently ‘responsible’. The context that is being used to justify all this is the need to reduce the huge public sector debt resulting from the bailout of the financial industry and New Labour's Keynesian response to the economic crisis which began in 2007. Yet these changes entail something far more than what is necessary simply for deficit reduction; they will leave a structural legacy for the welfare state that will endure well beyond this Parliament, and involve a very particular view of where the balance of sacrifice and responsibility should lie.

This issue of Social Policy Review casts a critical eye over many of the reforms being advanced by the Coalition government. In doing so, and given the profound long-term importance of these reforms, we have breached tradition by merging the first two sections of the Review into one extended symposium. We are acutely aware that the delay between the writing and publishing of a volume like this leaves a time lag during which events will inevitably have progressed; if a week is a long time in politics, a few months is an eternity during a crisis. Yet we are satisfied that we have gathered here a range of incisive contributions which provide analyses of the ideas, evidence, continuities and breaks relating to the government's evolving reforms that will continue to be essential reading for some time.

We start with an overview of Conservative social policy by Hugh Bochel in Chapter One, which sets the context by examining the development of Conservative Party social policy while in opposition and the challenges posed to the Conservatives by New Labour governments.