Limits to the Regulated Market: The UK Experiment

This chapter examines the shift towards a regulatory welfare state, using evidence from the experience of the UK. The UK can be seen as standing at one end of the range of European responses to globalization. The challenge facing the UK (and many other developed welfare states) during the past quarter century has been how to develop social policies that accommodate economic success in globalized markets with an adequate level of secure provision to meet social needs. From 1979 to 1997, the Conservative government sought to shift the balance towards free market solutions. ‘Public spending is at the heart of Britain’s economic difficulties’, declares the first sentence of the 1979 Public Expenditure White Paper (the annual policy planning document). The outcome was privatization across a range of areas, including pensions, and policies to cut state spending and transfer responsibility to individuals.