Welfare Reforms and the NHS

By the twentieth century, the Government no longer had a laissez-faire attitude to public health: they knew it was their responsibility to try to keep Britain healthy. Find out about how welfare reforms transformed healthcare in Britain from history lecturer, Dr Martin Farr.

When the second Boer War broke out in 1899, thousands of volunteers were rejected as they were viewed as being unfit to serve in the army. As you can imagine, this was a big worry for Britain, so it was decided that an investigation must be carried out into the lives of everyday people to find out how they lived and what their health was like. Social reformer Charles Booth previously carried out social surveys in London, and his findings were published in Booth’s Life and Labour of the People in 1889. Through his research, Booth found that around 35% of London’s population were living in poverty.

Seebohm Rowntree, another social reformer, decided to do the same thing in his local area after hearing about Booth’s work, so carried out his own surveys in York. After interviewing over 46,000 people, Rowntree published his team’s research in 1901 in Poverty, A Study in Town Life. Through his research, Rowntree found that around half of working-class people in York were living in poverty at that time.

Much later in 1913, Maud Pember Reeves published her Round About a Pound A Week after carrying out a study of workers with jobs we’d expect to be well-paid (like police officers for example) and finding they weren’t able to live on their £1-a-week wage. Through her research, Reeves wanted to make people aware that lots of women went without food so that working men and children could eat, and that often wages were wasted away on alcohol.

From 1906 to 1914, the Liberal Government passed several Acts to try and improve the quality of working-class people’s lives in Britain.

• The 1906 Workmen’s Compensation Act meant workers would be given compensation for any injuries they suffered when at work.
• The 1906 Education (Provisions of Meals) Act introduced free school meals for students.
• The 1907 Education (Administrative Provisions) Act introduced medical inspections to schools.
• The 1907 Matrimonial Causes Act meant divorced women were to receive maintenance payments.
• Also known as the Children’s Charter, the 1908 Children and Young Person’s Act introduced laws preventing the sale of fireworks, tobacco or alcohol to children.
• The 1908 Old-Age Pensions Act introduced state-funded pensions for those people over 70.
• The 1909 Housing and Town Planning Act banned back-to-back housing from being built.
• The 1911 National Insurance Act introduced National Health Insurance for workers.

Despite its issues, this Act marked the beginning of change and a move towards what we know as the Welfare State. In 1913, a further National Insurance Act was passed. This time, unemployment insurance was covered, so workers who lost their job could claim unemployment benefit for a limited period of time until they found new work.

Following on from the 1919 Housing Act, other laws were passed throughout the twenties and thirties to try and improve the housing situation. However, money was tight between the World Wars so it wasn’t easy. In 1930, another Housing Act was passed which forced private landlords to sell their slum housing to the council, so they could build new houses in their place. By 1939, councils had built over one million houses for workers. Later on, when Clement Attlee was Prime Minister from 1945 to 1951, the Government built a further one million houses.

• The 1944 Education Act, which made primary and secondary education free.
• The 1946 National Insurance Act, which extended National Health Insurance to provide benefits for unemployed people, pregnant people, widows, mothers and children, and to provide pensions for those who retired.
• The 1946 National Health Service Act, which introduced the idea of a free National Health Service for everybody.
• The 1946 New Towns Act, which meant 14 new towns could be built.
• The 1946 and 1949 Housing Acts, which provided funding for local councils to build council houses and rebuild their towns and cities

It wasn’t until two years later that all of these changes were in place. This was because Nye Bevan had many challengers, mainly from the Conservative Party and the British Medical Association (BMA). People were worried about the nationalisation of hospitals, there was anger about the cost of Bevan’s ideas, and the majority of the British Medical Association stated they would refuse to work with the NHS. As you can imagine, doctors were concerned they would lose out on money if healthcare became completely free. But Bevan managed to persuade people by allowing doctors to treat paying patients (what we know as private healthcare) alongside NHS patients who paid nothing. So the NHS was officially launched on July 5^th 1948.

Despite its life-changing impact, the NHS isn’t without its problems. Healthcare didn’t stay completely free for very long – by 1952 costs were introduced for spectacles, prescriptions and dental care to help relieve some of the pressure on the NHS. Despite these fees, which are still in place today, the rest of NHS healthcare remains free, and is valued by most people for allowing them to seek medical help when they need it.

Since the second half of the twentieth century, the government became much more involved in educating British people on matters relating to their health. Not everybody agrees it should be their role to do this, but the government has continued to pass laws, promote campaigns and share guidance to help people live healthy lives and prevent injury and illness.

Wearing a seatbelt became a law in 1983 for people sitting in the front seat of a car, and back seat passengers in 1991. These laws were introduced to prevent deaths from car accidents, and have proved successful. At the time, people weren’t too happy about this idea, but seatbelts have saved countless lives on the roads.