Liberal Welfare Reform

Did the liberal Welfare Reforms lay the foundations of the Welfare State?

This essay will assess how far reaching the liberal Welfare Reforms were and how far they can be said to represent the foundations of the Welfare State. The Welfare State is when the Government takes care of the health and well-being of all its citizens from “cradle to grave”. The liberal Welfare Reforms did represent a move away from “laissez-faire” towards a programme of social reform. The liberal reforms concentrated on five main groups. These were the young, introducing school meals and medical inspections with the Education Act 1906 and 1907, the old with the Old Age Pensions Act 1908, and the sick who were helped with the first part of the National Health Act
To bring Britain back to a good physical state, the Government decided it was best to start with children and did this with the Education (Provision of Meals) Act, 1906. Much of the credit for this Bill lies outside the Liberal Party. There was a lot of public concern created by reports carried out in the wake of the Boer War. One of these was a report carried out by The Royal Commission of Physical Condition in Scotland and the other was carried out by The Interdepartmental Committee on Physical Deterioration. A labour backbencher called William Wilson introduced the school meals proposal which was so popular that the Liberals decided to give it a chance; this was then called the Education (Provision of Meals) Act. The act allowed local authorities to take steps as they saw fit to provide school meals for children either through voluntary work or using the local authority money. Parents were to pay for school meals if they could afford it, however, if they could not the local authority could pay a halfpenny. The number of school meals provided by the Government started at 3 million in 1906 and eventually rose to 14 million in 1914. Within a short period of time a Government funded Welfare system was
On returning from Germany, Lloyd George immediately started work in setting up a way to help people who couldn’t earn money on their own as they suffered from illness. However, he again came up against opposition from friendly societies but also came up against Trade Unions and Doctors. As Lloyd George was Chancellor of the Exchequer he was also very aware of the cost of bringing in National insurance. In order to pay for the National insurance scheme, income tax was made more progressive in that the more money you earned, the more money you paid in tax. Lloyd George had to account for all of this in the 1909 budget, however, this was rejected by the House of Lords and the Parliament Act 1911 had to be passed to limit the power of the Lords. The Peoples Budget was passed in 1910 which meant that the Government now had the money to start its social welfare programme. The health insurance scheme was contained in part 1 of the National Insurance Act 1911, this was a compromised Act and there was a lot of work still to be done to help those at a disadvantage in society. To stop the opposition to the Act from Trade Unions, Lloyd George decided to include them in the system along with Friendly Societies who would help him with his new system. When Lloyd George came out with his proposals, the British Medical Group had very strong objections to them. They did not want what existed between the Doctors and the