This second and revised edition is the best and most up-to-date text on social security available. The first edition was the festschrift (or tombstone) for the Department of Work and Pensions Summer School – edited by the last but one director and containing chapters written by each of the tutors. The DWP has now tragically abandoned the Summer School. A newly installed human resources regime at the DWP suceeded in emasculating the Summer School and thus destroyed an annual event that started under the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance in the 1950s and survived the end of the NAB, SBC, DSS, DHSS, the Fowler cuts, Peter Lilley and long into New Labour. Every summer, usually at Kings College Cambridge, middle ranking staff would come from all over the UK to listen to lectures, work in study groups led by university academics, punt, debate and stay up too late. The Permanent Secretary and the Secretary of State would address the School, and senior officers from HQ and the agencies would visit. The students, most had never been to university, would be transformed and so would their attitudes to and understanding of their work. The collection of school photos tell the history of the Department (and society) – from, in the 1950s, Director Richard Titmuss in black and white, surrounded by older white men in suits, to 2005 Director Jane Millar in colour, surrounded by ethnically diverse, gender balanced and younger staff in jeans and tee shirts.

The Summer School enriched the study of social security in Britain by giving the members of the academic community with an interest in the subject the opportunity to learn about the reality at the sharp end of the massive enterprise that is social security. The discourse was thus enriched, research was stimulated and improved and there was a terrific exchange of ideas and information. Everyone benefited, including management.

These benefits are reflected in the chapters in this book. Here are the tutors writing on their tutorial group themes, with great authority. But also with the experience of how to make it interesting and exciting for students.

While that is the strength of the book, it may also be its weakness – at least as a text book on social security. I suppose Millar wrote her introduction on the role of social security after reading the other chapters and felt she had not got much more to say. It is too brief. At the Summer School, she would have given an inspiring opening address. Here she relinquishes too much of the material that should have gone into that lecture – the demographic and labour market context; the distinctions between social protection, social assistance, and so forth; the salience of social security – to later chapters – some much later. I also failed to understand the purpose of the second chapter to by Bennett and Millar on reforms and challenges. It is based around the Fowler reviews and the Commission for Social Justice, which seems curious. A good solid history chapter would have been better – tracing social security from the Elizabethan Poor Law to the Employment Support Allowance (ugh!). There are other gaps in coverage – no chapter on poverty (though of course it comes up everywhere); not enough on housing and council tax benefit (too big to ignore); only a smattering of comparative material in the chapters but nothing substantial – for example, comparing poverty, benefit rates, expenditure, distributional effects, regimes. The macro-economic role and impact of social security is also ignored.

But I cavil. This is a very useful book. I especially liked the chapters by Tess Ridge on benefits for children, McKay on pensions (what a sorry story!). The whole section on users and providers illustrates how the academic community has got closer to operations – thanks to the Summer School. The approach is generally very critical. Much of it will make the soon to be out of office and probably out of parliament New Labour government people wince at what they did. Burchardt concludes her chapter on inequality with ‘by treating claimants with disrespect and suspicion, the way social security is delivered threatens to undermine key aspects of equality’. Or Carmel and Papadopoulos on contracting ‘the distribution of rights, responsibilities and risks for individuals and institutions follows a logic of ever increasing contractualisation of their relationships and extensive monitoring of their behaviour and performance. As such, contemporary British social security can be described as not very social and even less secure.’ Or the excoriating analysis of the welfare to work strategies by Sharon Wright.

Of course the book already needs updating. But the Summer School team has been broken. The spirit and commitment dissipated. The tutors are moving their interests (three from the first volume are already missing in this). Social security policy studies have been damaged by managerialism. How are we to attract the interest of bright young scholars without the DWP Summer School?