Welfare reform refers to the process of reforming the framework of social security and welfare provisions, but what is considered acceptable reform is a matter of debate. The term was used in the United States to characterize the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act. Reform generally denotes a change in the size, scope, and/or means of provision of welfare, whether positive or negative; whilst intending to preserve the overall goal of a program or programs.

Social welfare is administered in three ways in United Kingdom, the National Health Service, the Social Services program, and the Pensions Service program all play a part in the providing social welfare.

The National Health Service provides a system of government supplied health care. The agency employs over two million doctors, pharmacists, nurses, and other health care workers to achieve this end. It has at its disposal a budget of over £ 60 billion. The National Health Service is the primary implementation mechanism of Department of Health policy. Welfare administration dealing with Social Services, a major branch of welfare, also fall under NHS jurisdiction.

William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton (born William Jefferson Blythe III; August 19, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation. Clinton has been described as a New Democrat. Many of his policies have been attributed to a centrist Third Way philosophy of governance.

Born and raised in Arkansas, Clinton became both a student leader and a skilled musician. He is an alumnus of Georgetown University where he was Phi Beta Kappa and earned a Rhodes Scholarship to attend the University of Oxford. He is married to Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has served as the United States Secretary of State since 2009 and was a Senator from New York from 2001 to 2009. Both Clintons received law degrees from Yale Law School, where they met and began dating. As Governor of Arkansas, Clinton overhauled the state's education system, and served as Chair of the National Governors Association.

Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was an English American author and journalist whose career spanned more than four decades. Hitchens, often referred to colloquially as "Hitch", was a columnist and literary critic for New Statesman, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Daily Mirror, The Times Literary Supplement and Vanity Fair. He was an author of twelve books and five collections of essays. As a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits, he was a prominent public intellectual, and his confrontational style of debate made him both a lauded and controversial figure.

Hitchens was known for his admiration of George Orwell, Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson, as well as for his excoriating critiques of various public figures including Mother Teresa, Bill Clinton, Henry Kissinger and Diana, Princess of Wales. Although he supported the Falklands War, his key split from the established political left began in 1989 after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left to the Rushdie Affair. The September 11 attacks strengthened his internationalist embrace of an interventionist foreign policy, and his vociferous criticism of what he called "fascism with an Islamic face." His numerous editorials in support of the Iraq War caused some to label him a neoconservative, although Hitchens insisted he was not "a conservative of any kind", and his friend Ian McEwan describes him as representing the anti-totalitarian left.

Steven John Webb, better known as Steve Webb (born 18 July 1965), is an English Liberal Democrat politician. He is the Member of Parliament for Thornbury & Yate and the Minister of State for Pensions.

Webb was born in West Bromwich to Brian and Patricia Webb, and attended the local comprehensive school (Dartmouth High School), before going on to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Hertford College, Oxford. He then worked at the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London, where he specialised in researching into poverty, taxes and benefits. In 1995, he became a Professor of Social Policy at the University of Bath.

At the 1997 General Election Webb was elected as MP for Northavon, just north of Bristol, overturning a Conservative majority of over 11,000. He increased a 2,137 majority to 9,877 in the 2001 Election and again to 11,033 in the 2005 Election.

In 2001, Webb was promoted by Charles Kennedy to lead spokesman for the Liberal Democrats on Work and Pensions, a portfolio he had worked in since 1999. He continued in this position until being appointed as Liberal Democrat Health spokesman in 2005. At the end of 2006, he started a new role co-ordinating the party's manifesto for the next general election. In the first reshuffle after the leadership election, he was appointed Liberal Democrat Environment, Energy, Food and Rural Affairs spokesman. Following Gordon Brown's reshuffle in October 2008, he shadowed Ed Miliband in the newly formed Department for Energy and Climate Change. On 8 January 2009 Nick Clegg announced his "General Election Team" and an "economic recovery group" with Webb appointed as Work and Pensions spokesman.

Stephen Creswell Timms (born 29 July 1955) is a British Labour politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for East Ham since 1994. He is a former Cabinet Minister having served as Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2006 to 2007. He is also the Vice-Chair of the Labour Party, and vice chairman for faith groups.

Timms was the Financial Secretary to the Treasury 1999-2001, 2004-2005, and 2008-2010. Since 11 May 2010, he has been the Shadow Financial Secretary to the Treasury. Timms has the largest majority of any sitting MP (27,826), with 70.4% of the local vote.

On 14 May 2010 he survived a murder attempt by a radical Islamist constituent, Roshonara Choudhry.

Timms was born in Oldham, Lancashire, to Ronald James Timms, an engineer, and Margaret Joyce Timms, a teacher. He was educated at Farnborough Grammar School in Farnborough, Hampshire, and read Mathematics at Emmanuel College, Cambridge where he gained an MA in Mathematics in 1977 and an MPhil in Operational Research in 1978.

Before entering politics, Timms worked in the telecommunications industry for 15 years, first for Logica from 1978–86 and then for Ovum from 1986–94, where he was the manager responsible for producing reports on the future of telecommunications. Timms was elected as a councillor for the Little Ilford Ward on Newham London Borough Council in a by-election in 1984, and served as Leader of the Council from 1990 to 1994.