Abstract

The 2010 general election, which led to the establishment of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, also saw the largest turnover of MPs since the Second World War, with the election of 227 new MPs, thirty-five per cent of the House of Commons. Focusing primarily on the Conservative Party, although also looking more broadly across the House, this paper examines attitudes to social policy amongst the newly elected MPs. Drawing on interviews with an eventual sample of ten per cent of newly elected MPs, it examines their attitudes towards the role of the state in social policy, and the extent of parliamentary support for reform, within the Conservative Party, their Coalition partners, and across the House of Commons. The paper also draws upon earlier research by the authors, which examined MPs’ attitudes to social policy during the 2005-2010 parliament, to provide some comparative data on attitudes in the previous parliament, including, for example, whether there is any significant difference between MPs elected in 2010 and their longer serving colleagues.