In this article we explore the ways in which three public services have been responding to the demand that people who use services be treated as consumers. We argue that New Labour views of modernisation and reform of public services have been organised around this principle. Drawing on a study of three services health care, policing and care we consider how senior managers interpret the pressures towards consumerism and the dilemmas that such an approach gives rise to. While each service has a distinctive trajectory through these issues, we suggest that three common dilemmas may be observed: the problematic relationship between consumerism and inequalities; the difficult intersection of rights, rationing and resources; and the ‘knowledge/power knot’ whose tangles reflect unsettled encounters between varieties of expertise, voice and authority
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