Public Values and Public Trust: Responses to Welfare State Reform in the UK

The current reform programme in the UK welfare state appears to improve cost-efficiency and responsiveness in many areas, but runs the risk of generating further problems. This paper argues that the justification for the new directions in policy rest ultimately on a particular understanding of agency. The limitations of this account explain why proponents of the reforms tend not to recognise or pay adequate attention to problems of legitimacy and public trust. Evidence from a new survey is used to demonstrate this in the context of the reform of the National Health Service