intro of welfare state

• Welfare State


  System of social services, benefits, and programmes provided by the government to help people in need
• By the beginning of the 20th century, most areas of Britain had hospital provision of some sort, but the system was fragmented
• Types of hospitals


  • Private fee-paying hospitals
  • Voluntary hospitals run by charities
  • Hospitals set up by local councils
• The areas which needed hospitals most were least well-provided, e.g. the first hospital in the Rhondda Valley was not built until 1887 and had only four beds for 100,000 inhabitants
• During the 19th century most politicians had believed that poverty was the fault of the individual
• Gradually this attitude began to change and in the years leading up to World War One, the Liberal governments of 1906–1914 introduced a series of welfare reforms to help people who fell into difficulty because of sickness, old age or unemployment
• The beginnings of the modern welfare state can be traced back to this period
• National Insurance Scheme 1911


  Scheme established by David Lloyd George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, where contributions were made by workers, employers and government
• Lloyd George promised 9d for 4d which meant that workers received 9d worth of cover for every 4d they paid in
• National Insurance Scheme


  • Provided workers with free medical care and sickness benefits if they became ill
  • Only covered some occupations and did not include the families of those covered, the elderly or the long-term sick
• In 1920, the scheme was extended to cover all workers earning up to £250 a year (except farm workers and domestic servants) though families were still not included
• The scheme brought benefits to many people, but during the Depression of the 1930s it came under severe pressure
• As unemployment rose to over 3,000,000, people could not keep up their contributions to the scheme, and the government also cut its contributions, further reducing the effectiveness of the scheme
• For many families in the poorer areas of Britain, the quality of healthcare deteriorated in the 1930s, as people could not afford medical care, leading to a rise in infant mortality in areas like the south Wales valleys