Welfare-to-work policies, and indeed social security more generally, are key areas where the relationship between the citizen and the state has been rethought and redefined over recent years (Wright, 2009). This chapter explores the shifting welfare reform policy context in the UK, discussing the ways in which reforms have cumulatively transformed social security provision (Bradshaw, 2015). Over the past 35 years and across diverse nation states and contexts, there has been a sustained emphasis on ‘activating’ benefit claimants, with a reliance on measures that seek to ensure that all those who can are on a journey from ‘dependency’ to a fêted independence via engagement in the paid labour market. This is apparent in the US's transformation of its welfare landscape, in Germany's Hartz reforms, in Sweden's active labour market policies and in the UK, where welfare conditionality has been steadily intensified and extended (Finn and Gloster, 2010; Fohrbeck et al., 2014). Following an overview of the dominant framing of the ‘welfare’ problem in the UK, this chapter outlines the constituent elements of what is best seen as a framing consensus on ‘welfare’ before summarising the most recent changes. Given this book's exploration of experiences of welfare reform from 2010–16, there is an inevitable focus on the reforms enacted by Cameron's Conservative-led governments from that period. However, this is placed within a context of ongoing welfare reform, under first Margaret Thatcher and then John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

What's the problem?

It is helpful firstly to explore how politicians have presented the ‘welfare’ policy problem and proposed solution over recent years. Bacchi's (1999) work on ‘problem representation’ reminds us of the roles governments play in the production and representation of policy problems, with these particular, often partial and biased, representations then mobilised to defend a clear policy direction and agenda. This has particular relevance to social security, with successive governments having developed a powerful, and apparently persuasive, narrative concerning the problem of ‘welfare’. The dominant problem representation suggests that social security, narrowly equated with ‘welfare’ (understood as out-of-work benefits for working-age adults), is of itself inevitably problematic. ‘Welfare’ and those who receive it are problematised, with a focus on cultures of ‘welfare dependency’ that are supposedly created and encouraged by social security support.