It is always good to welcome a text from a relatively new social policy publisher, although for a hardback for nearly £75, the welcome is likely to be a little less warm and wide than it may have been. The subtitle is a better guide to the contents than the title. The ‘central objective’ of the book is to examine whether New Labour succeeded across a range of policy areas in gaining our trust (p. 271). Written before the MPs’ expenses scandal, many people may come to a decision about trust and politicians without needing to read these 300+ pages! Others may read Seldon's 2009 book on trust that covers some of the same issues in a more popular style and at a far cheaper price.

The editors address this objective by setting out a conceptual framework of trust, and asking the contributors to apply this across a wide variety of areas. After the editors’ introduction, the book contains three sections: health, welfare and citizenship; the manner of engagement with individuals, organisations and communities; and crime (p. 11). There are chapters on weapons of mass destruction (WMD), active citizenship, pensions, teenage pregnancy, the NHS, outreach drug work, equality of opportunity and diversity, community participation, regeneration partnerships, burglary reduction, domestic violence, crime and disorder partnerships, and the editors’ concluding thoughts.

One of the strengths of the book it that it includes good discussions of issues that often do not feature heavily in ‘mainstream’ texts. The three chapters on crime will be of interest to many readers. Some of the contributors build on areas that reflect well-regarded previous contributions in the social policy literature, such as Nick Johns on equality and diversity, and Rob Mawby on crime reduction. While, then, the book has impressive parts, I feel that the sum of the parts add up to less than the whole for a number of reasons.

First, the conceptual framework on trust perhaps did not provide a sufficient foundation for the rest of the book. The discussion is a little confusing with three sets of expectations; three aspects and three sets of criteria (pp. 5–7). The rationale for choosing to base the conceptual framework on Sztompka is not fully explained, and it seems a little strange to cite two internet sources (shades of students and Wikipedia citations?) rather than his 1999 Cambridge University Press book (Sztompka, Reference Sztompka1999). Peter Taylor-Gooby's recent text (2009) was clearly published too late to be discussed, but his discussion is far more wide ranging and detailed. For example, Taylor-Gooby (Reference Taylor-Gooby2009: 9) explores different debates on trust, and points to ‘an extensive literature in various disciplines’.

Second, the framework is not drawn on to any great extent in many of the subsequent chapters. Many contributors do not refer to the framework in general or Sztompka in particular. To add to the confusion, some contributors provide a rather different conceptual framework of trust (e.g. Jamie Gaskarth on WMD in chapter 2; Martin Hyde and Martin Hockaday on pensions, chapter 4).

Third, the book is not comprehensive in terms of social policy coverage. It covers WMD, but there are no chapters on education, social security (excluding pensions), housing and social care. There are also different approaches, including descriptive policy commentaries and fairly narrow case studies based on the contributors’ own research. In one sense, the book falls between the stools of a text, an edited monograph and the ‘book of the conference’.

With apologies to the editors for discussing the book that I would have written, the book also was light on some issues that I would have expected, such as more discussion of some of the earlier work of Taylor-Gooby (see citations in his 2009 book) and Julian Le Grand (Reference Le Grand2007) on trust (versus targets, choice and voice). It would also cover some of the ground of Seldon (Reference Seldon2009). There was relatively little on delivery. Given that a major element of New Labour was meeting pledges in contrast to the Conservatives’ breach of trust- the ‘fall of ideology and the rise of trust’ (p. 10), I would have expected more on pledge cards, targets, public service agreements and Annual Reports (cf. Powell, Reference Powell2002). A linked issue, only really discussed by Adrian Barton on outreach drug work in chapter 7 is the decline in trust in the professions and the rise of audit, regulation and inspection (cf. Le Grand, Reference Le Grand2007). The chapter on health care would have been an obvious place to discuss these issues, with the importance of the Bristol Royal Infirmary, Alder Hey and Harold Shipman. It sadly appears that in addition to not trusting the professionals, we should not trust the regulators either. To revive one of my previous lines, you would not be wise to bet your mortgage on the Financial Services Authority, and it appears that hospitals and care homes that have been judged adequate or better by the Care Quality Commission (and its predecessor) have serious problems. This all adds up to potentially tragic problems of trust for Baby P, Patient A and Resident B.

While the book signalled the importance of trust for the delivery of social policy, and contains useful discussions of a wide range of issues, it was uneven in its own delivery, and has some elements of a missed opportunity.