Abstract
The United Kingdom (UK) has been in the international spotlight from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, experiencing an ostensibly high prevalence of the disease, failing to respond as quickly as other countries with respect to border controls and social distancing measures, but also rolling out one of the most successful vaccine programmes in the world. This chapter considers the British response to COVID-19 from a welfare regime perspective. Does the UK Government’s initial resistance to deploying emergency powers, its preference for outsourcing contracts for key COVID services to private providers rather than relying on local and national statutory providers, and the fact that the National Health Service (NHS) and social care providers were at considerably reduced capacity following years of economic austerity reflect the fact that the UK is essentially a ‘liberal’ welfare regime? Or does the remarkable increase in public expenditure (estimated to range from £315 to £410 billion), years of investment in vaccine research and development and the prosocial and solidarity-related behaviours exhibited by the British population speak to a more collective, social-democratic welfare regime? The chapter suggests that, in regime terms, the British welfare state is mixed, though the fact that COVID-19 has been experienced unequally in the UK—by socio-economic status, ethnicity, age and disability—is more suggestive of a liberal regime that is willing to tolerate high levels of inequality.
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Asthana, S. (2022). COVID-19 in the United Kingdom: How a Mixed Welfare Regime Has Responded to the Pandemic. In: Akhtar, R. (eds) Coronavirus (COVID-19) Outbreaks, Vaccination, Politics and Society. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09432-3_19
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