Martin Powell 
Evaluating New Labour’s welfare reforms 

The New Labour Government has placed great emphasis on service delivery. It has provided performance information in the form of Annual Reports, Public Service Agreements, Performance Assessment Frameworks, and a host of other targets. But has New Labour delivered on its welfare reform? Evaluating New Labour’s welfare reforms: provides the first detailed and comprehensive examination of the welfare reforms of New Labour’s first term; compares achievements with stated aims; examines success in the wider context; contributes to the debate on the problems of evaluating social policy. It is essential reading for academics and students of social policy and provides important information for academics and students in a wide range of areas such as politics, sociology, public policy, public administration and public management interested in welfare reform and policy evaluation.

About the author

Martin Powell is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy in the Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath. His edited text on ‘New Labour, New Welfare State?’ (Policy Press, 1999) is one of the best known accounts of recent social policy reforms.