labour reforms 1945-51

Question 1

beveridge report

Answer 1

-written by William Beveridge
-giants were: want, disease, squalor and ignorance and ideleness
-set up in 1924

Question 2

welfare reforms

Answer 2

want (poverty)
-1946 national insurance act, family allowance act (money to all mother of two or more children, not means tested), national assistance board
-all adults (cradle to grave), sickness and unemployment benefits, pensions for women 60 men 65, best and cheapest insurance
-pensions still not enough to live of, reduced by inflation and below poverty line
-roundtre: old age sickness, injury at work and unemployment, succesful

squalor (housing, war shortage)
-build 100k house/year, 1949 housing act (council repair old houses), new towns act 1946 (planned towns)
-prefabs: short erm solution to slums, 1946 55k 139k 147 227k 1948, good conditions 12 new towns
-economics situation did not help, shortage, baby boom, 1951 long wait
-success

idleness(unemployment)
-1949 write policy of full employment 20% nationalised and undervalued the pound
-2.5% in 1946, interest rates low, car 30% cheaper, real wages 20% higher than in 1938
-success

ignorance
-butler education act 1944
-small increase in proportion of working class at grammar school, middle class benefitted
-reinforced class boundaries, working class at moderate middle at grammar due to tutors, failure of 11+, grammar could only take 20%
-small increases

disease
-formation of the NHS in 1946, implemented 1948
-universal access regardless of class or income, funded by n.i., new payment for doctors, prescriptions
-doctor civil servant, fear of ending private healthcare, backlog of untreated, £13.5m in prescription sept 1948, 5 million glasses, n.i. 9% of funding
-greatest achievement of post war gov, ordinary people celebrated it, split over 1951 prescription charges