The language that policymakers use can be meaningful in many different ways. Language can be a tool through which to make clear the implications of a new policy, or a device to make those implications all the more opaque. The choice of one set of words over another set, or the replacement of accepted terms of reference for new vocabularies, can be indicative of important shifts in the policy terrain. There is a danger in assuming that words are in themselves equivalent to action. Yet it is also problematic to assume that language is just words, with no value to observers of policy analysis. Words carry meaning, shape possibilities, close down alternative courses of action and create coalitions of actors.

This book developed from an interest in the way that a new policy vocabulary was emerging during New Labour's final term in office, and was being picked up and echoed by the other major political parties. The most high-profile term used was personalisation, although related terms such as tailored and individualised services were also utilised. Together they conveyed a sense that public services were being reshaped around what the individual service user wanted – not around the interests of professionals or the performance targets of managers. What was striking about this discourse was its reach – personalised approaches were being talked about across all public services: in social care, health, employment services, housing, criminal justice and education. As Beresford reflected, writing in 2008, ‘A term that had been little more than a vague idea in a 2005 Green Paper now seemed to have gained unstoppable force’ (2008, p 8).

This was an agenda to which central and local government were committed, and one that New Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats seemed to share (Keohane, 2009; 2020 Public Services Trust, 2010). In the former Labour government's call for a ‘cross-government push towards personalisation’ (DH, 2008a, p 3), and also David Cameron's vision of a ‘post-bureaucratic age’ (2009), could be found a shared call for services that transferred control to individual service users.