Silencing the social: Debt and depletion in UK social policy

Abstract

This article draws on a social reproduction approach to examine how debt informed the development of UK welfare provision. A brief history of the Public Works Loan Board introduces its centrality not only in the delivering of welfare institutions but also in the typographies and social values that informed welfare policies. The depletion of social care services today may be evident in the extensive use of debt to deliver social policy across the United Kingdom. However, in the past access to publicly backed borrowing enabled local authorities to deliver social rights that had been legislated for by central government. We can therefore see that it was not debt but its democratic accountability that played a central role in the changing fortunes of the UK’s welfare state.