ABSTRACT
This chapter discuses the rise of evidence-based policy and evaluation under New Labour, and sets this in the context of the UK welfare-to-work agenda for disabled people. It opens up a critique which debates the potential for analyses which take cognisance of the ways in which geography and geographical processes may contribute to an understanding of how workfare programmes operate, and drawing on government-commissioned research reports, focuses on this specifically in the context of the New Deal for Disabled People (NDDP) evaluation. The chapter highlights some of the consequences of the lack of spatial analysis for the way in which disabled people, and disability, are understood in such programmes. The evidence-based agenda has provoked debate amongst geographers and other social scientists about a number of issues, including what constitutes evidence, the relationship between research and policy, and the epistemological underpinnings of the evidence-based enterprise itself.
