In terms of the politics of welfare, from the start of the first Labour term considerable attention has been devoted to the extent to which New Labour's policies have deviated from or been consistent with those of the preceding Conservative government, including the extent to which the government had accepted New Right arguments, such as over the centrality of the market and the shortcomings of attempts to achieve greater equality. Given that The Labour Party, prior to the 1997 General Election, seeking to reduce the danger of portrayal as a ‘tax and spend’ party, had committed itself to abiding by the Conservatives’ public expenditure plans for the first two years of government, it was perhaps unsurprising that the new government was characterised by some as cautious and lacking radicalism. Although levels of public expenditure increased substantially from 1999, particularly on areas such as public order, health and education (see Table 2.1), critics of New Labour were also able to highlight examples of policy where there had been significant continuity from the approaches of the Conservatives, such as the continued commitment to a significant role for the private sector in the provision of welfare, including parts of the work of the NHS, cuts in entitlements to some social security benefits, the frequently managerialist approach, and the use of targets and performance measures. On the other hand, it is possible to point to initiatives such as the commitment to eradicate child poverty, the expansion of childcare, and the increases in expenditure on some areas of welfare, notably the NHS, to argue that there has been a significant degree of redistribution of wealth from the rich to at least some of the poorer parts of the population (for example, Gregg et al, 2005), although this is something that few Labour politicians have emphasised publicly. One of the features of the Labour governments was the acceptance of social exclusion as a major factor in society, with, for example, the establishment of the Social Exclusion Unit in late 1997, an initiative that also reflected the government's attempts to create a new approach to policy making, including greater use of ‘evidence’ and ‘joined-up’ policy (for example, Cabinet Office, 1999a).