As for the centre-left, Helen Clark and her Labour-led coalition were criticised by ex-Alliance members and non-government organisations for their alleged lack of attention to centre-left social policies, while trade union membership recovered due to Labour's repeal of the Employment Contracts Act 1991 and labour market deregulation and the deunionisation that had accompanied it in the nineties. It is plausible that Clark and her Cabinet were influenced by Tony Blair and his British Labour Government, which pursued a similar balancing act between social and fiscal responsibility while in government.