Contents

Chapters in this book

1. Front Matter i
2. Contents iii
3. Notes on contributors v
4. Introduction 1
5. Current services
6. Social security and welfare reform under New Labour 15
7. New Labour’s education policy: innovation or reinvention? 33
8. Transforming the NHS: the story in 2004 51
9. Housing in an ‘opportunity society’ 69
10. Personal Social Services 85
11. Current issues
12. Governance and social policy in Northern Ireland (1999-2004): the devolution years and postscript 107
13. At home abroad: the presidential election of 2004, the politics of American social policy and what European readers might make of these subjects 125
14. The future of healthcare in the UK: think-tanks and their policy prescriptions 147
15. Consumerism and the reform of public services: inequalities and instabilities 167
16. The challenges of measuring government output in the healthcare sector 183
17. Social investment perspectives and practices: a decade in British politics 203
18. New Labour
19. A rootless third way: a continental European perspective on New Labour’s welfare state, revisited 233
20. Welfare after Thatcherism: New Labour and social democratic politics 255
21. A progressive consensus in the making? 273
22. New Labour’s family policy 289
23. Index 303