“This is not so much a ‘hollowing out’ of the state, but a fundamental redirection to finance and manage markets and collusion in the deepening of corporate welfare.” Chartist, July/August 2012.

An eBook by Ian Ferguson and Michael Lavalette that examines recent developments in social work with adults, including the personalisation agenda, and critically discusses the prospects for adult social care in a context of never-ending austerity. Six respondents, including Dexter Whitfield, comment on the paper followed by concluding a reply to their comments by the…

A paper written for Studies in Social Services, Li Bing, Vice Professor, Department of Sociology, Beijing Administrative College, China. Social services are at the forefront of the continued neoliberal transformation of public services and the welfare state in the UK. The paper applies the In Place of Austerity framework to examine the changes in social…

“‘Payment by results’ has become the new performance management mantra. It is intended to incentivise contractors, with payment conditional on the completion of agreed outputs or outcomes. There are currently two such payment and reward models: the social impact bond mechanism and phased incentive payments.” This article examines the implications of this approach, the growth…

The book by Stewart Player and Colin Leys exposes how a succession of New Labour Health Ministers, advisers, senior civil servants and staff recruited from the private sector operated in the Department of Health to restructure the private health care sector with a network of Independent Sector Treatment Centres (ISTCs). Equally important, it chronicles the…

Cutting through the coalition government’s rhetoric of localism and ‘community rights’, Dexter Whitfield exposes a strategy to further destabilise and fracture public provision, accelerating marketisation and privatisation.

An article in Local Government Chronicle, 9 June 2011, describes commissioning as a wolf in sheep’s clothing because it will lead to private monopoly, commercialised services, agendas dominated by the vested interests of private contractors and little transparency. Sets out an alternative approach. www.lgcplus.com

Dexter Whitfield author of ‘Global Auction, of Public Assets’, describes the damaging effects of so-called Public Private Partnerships in a detailed interview with the New Left Project in March 2010 . He outlines why they are a disastrous way to provide essential services and he details a democratic alternative to PPPs.

*Soundings* Winter 2010, Issue 46, pp99-111. Outlines the elements of neoliberal transformation of the public sector and the criteria needed to assess the level of embeddedness and effectiveness of recent ‘reform’. It identifies key challenges beyond 2010 and proposes strategies to achieve progressive and systemic change.