ABSTRACT
This chapter examines key income maintenance discursive practices and policies under the neo-liberals, and the emerging policies of New Labour. It explains policies in relation to the unemployed, lone parents, elders and disabled people –areas that have been at the centre of European policy debates during the last decade. The concept of a dominant discourse of welfare will be used to assess the impact of neo-liberal policies on poverty and social exclusion, and on the policy legacy inherited by New Labour. The chapter outlines New Labour's emerging policies and analyses to assess the extent to which they inhabit the same discourse of welfare as the neo-liberals and, consequently, the extent to which they are likely to ameliorate or exacerbate poverty and social exclusion for particular groups in the UK. By the time the neo-liberals came to power, the NI scheme accounted for nearly two-thirds of social security spending and the social assistance for about 35 per cent.
