A good article written while the coalition were in power but relies on facts and figures about the welfare state. Albeit likely biased having being written by a socialist website it basically highlights that labour and conservatives (and all social democratic parties) are not that different on ideology, working more for capitalism than the ordinary working person.
isj.org.uk/can-the-tories-abolish-the-welfare-state/
This part was particularly illuminating: "...ideology rather than the pressures of deficit reduction is the fact that on the very same day that the bedroom tax was announced in parliament (estimated to “save” the Treasury £480 million) the top rate of tax in the UK was cut from 50 percent to 45 percent, resulting in a loss of revenue of £1 billion"