Querulous citizens: Welfare knowledge and the limits to welfare reform

Governments face pressures to improve services and (at the same time) to contain taxes and to ensure that their decisions are accountable to increasingly well-informed and challenging citizens. The dilemma of squaring the welfare circle confronts New Labour in a particularly acute form, since the party has set ambitious targets for improvements in the NHS, education and elsewhere, and is also committed to economic prudence and transparency. This article uses new data from a major national survey to investigate knowledge and beliefs in the main policy areas. It shows that most people are generally strikingly well-informed in some areas and ill-informed in others. A government which wishes to pursue a progressive direction in redistribution, increasing taxation of the better-off, or expanding provision for those on low incomes, faces real difficulties because many people hold inaccurate beliefs about policy impact and the policy context in these areas. However, NHS costs are more accurately perceived across the population, and the proposed expansion is likely to create less controversy. Current high-profile policies appear to follow the contours of public knowledge reasonably accurately, but further policy development will require positive efforts to lead debates and improve public knowledge.