ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the influence of the United State welfare-to-work experience and of other theoretical and practical welfare models on New Labour's design of the New Deal is scrutinized within the context of the party's search for a new identity. It deals with an account of Labour's search for a new identity and its reshaping of economic and welfare policy. Labour pledged to introduce a Jobs, Education and Training scheme for Britain, improving co-ordination of Departmental and agency activities and providing unemployed people with 'job advocates' along the line of Job Advisors in Australia. New Labour turned out to be considerably more receptive to the idea of large-scale job placement programme than the Conservatives had been. In the mid-1990s, Labour needed to realign its core policies to 'provide the party with the middle-class support that electoral victory demanded'. The issue of compulsion has received much attention among students of developments in active labour market policy in the United Kingdom.