ABSTRACT
This chapter continues the examination of the policy process behind the establishment of the Nursery Education Voucher Scheme. It is concerned with the stage of ‘policy negotiation’. This policy stage covers the period between the announcement of the scheme by the Secretary of State for Education and Employment in the House of Commons on 6 July 1995, to its trial in Phase One piloting areas in April 1996. During this time, ministers and civil servants in the DfEE carried out negotiations with actors concerned over the more detailed arrangements of the voucher scheme. I argued in the last chapter that the central state actors — the Prime Minister, ministers from the Treasury Office and other right-wing ministers were the most powerful in deciding what was to be on the policy agenda and what was to become policy. However, once the decision for a voucher scheme was made, it was left to the government department responsible — the DfEE, to work out the details. There was some overlap between the stage of policy negotiation and legislation with the later part of the negotiation stage taking place simultaneously with the legislation stage, after the latter started in Parliament in January 1996.
