The Liberal party's victory in the 1906 general election.
The huge scale of the Liberal party's victory in the 1906 general election guaranteed many new faces among the ranks of Liberal MPs, in favour of change in the field of social welfare. Between the years 1906 and 1914, the Liberals took steps to improve the health standards and the living and working conditions of the lower class. The main areas of people new legislation was targeted on were the working class under risk of poverty due to sickness or unemployment, their children and old age pensioners. The effectiveness of Liberal rule on these matters is not clear, as much of the legislation introduced to solve poverty problems, can be argued to be unsuccessful at what it was intended to achieve.The first task undertaken by the new Liberal government was the welfare of children. The issue of malnourished children had increasingly surfaced since the extension of rate aid to all schools and creation of Local Education Authorities in 1902, so the issue of children too hungry or generally debilitated was well documented by 1906. A report from the Committee on Physical Deterioration noted inadequate feeding-"It is the height of cruelty to subject half starved children to the process of education". To solve this problem the government introduced the Education Act of 1906. Local education authorities were able to provide school meals for destitute children by levying an additional rate of halfpenny in the pound. Although the Act was seen as progressive, the fact that it was not made compulsory argues if it was effective enough. By 1911, less than a third of all education authorities were using rates to support school meal provision and it had taken until 1914 for the Board of Education to make such provision compulsory.Meanwhile, in 1907, the Education Act made medical inspections for children compulsory. Under this Act, the Board of Education was able to specify that at least three inspections must take place during a child's school years. This was introduced in order to reduce the outbreaks of disease, which were very frequent at the time. Although this step helped improve national health levels in children, there were no such measures introduced after school life. The fact that there was no National Health Service introduced shows that although the Liberals attempted to improve the welfare of children, they did not improve the health conditions of adults or school leavers.Finally, the Children's act of 1908 introduced a consolidation of measures to deal with child neglect and abuse and set up juvenile courts and remand homes to remove child offenders from the adult courts and prisons. This Act ensured children were not living on the streets without food or education. The attempts
made to improve child welfare were eventually successful, but the time taken to enforce all the legislation means the laws passed only helped improve conditions for some children during the period from 1906 to 1914.The second target for the Liberals was the welfare of old age pensioners. Poverty was high as they had no successful financial backing from the government and could not make enough money working. The Old Age Pensions Act was introduced in 1908. The Act provided for pensions of 5s per week to be paid to those aged 70 or over who had annual incomes of twenty ...
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made to improve child welfare were eventually successful, but the time taken to enforce all the legislation means the laws passed only helped improve conditions for some children during the period from 1906 to 1914.The second target for the Liberals was the welfare of old age pensioners. Poverty was high as they had no successful financial backing from the government and could not make enough money working. The Old Age Pensions Act was introduced in 1908. The Act provided for pensions of 5s per week to be paid to those aged 70 or over who had annual incomes of twenty pounds or less. For incomes over twenty pounds a sliding scale of descending, graduated payments would be made up to a ceiling of a thirty one pound annual income, at which point the payments ceased. Although this legislation did help to improve the social conditions of many pensioners and help to prevent extreme poverty, there were many exclusions. Those who had claimed poor relief in the previous year or had been in prison in the previous ten years had no entitlement. Also excluded were those who had failed to work regularly. The government did reduce the qualifying period for ex-convicts to two years to attempt to widen the success of this Act. By 1914 there were 970 000 claimants, costing the Exchequer twelve pounds million a year, which suggests that this Act was successful. The amount of money received was relatively small and it can be argued that it was not enough to prevent poverty. Many MPs like Phillip Snowden argued that the pension able age was so high that not many would reach it. This and the fact that all those who claimed poor relief the previous year were excluded strengthens the case that this piece of legislation was not successful in improving the poverty situation, but maintaining it.Once the issue of Old Age Pensions was addressed, how ever limitedly, the government moved onto the problem of loss of earning due to unemployment or sickness. The general economic situation was becoming difficult for the lower income groups. Unemployment was rising and wages were falling, which made this a pressing issue. At the Board of Trade, the government initiated work on the setting up of labour exchanges, which eventually resulted in legislation in 1909. Many argue that the introduction of labour exchanges was ineffective as work was still very hard to find and wages were low, not allowing the average lower income workers to pull themselves over the poverty line.Although work on schemes to introduce sickness and unemployment insurance was well advanced by 1909, their eventual implementation was delayed until the National Insurance Act of 1911. Many government politicians such as David Lloyd George were determined to introduce this scheme. Nevertheless, it can be argued that they were very slow to reform, as the first payments were not made until the summer of 1912 for unemployment and the beginning of 1913 for health. They may however have taken much longer to introduce this Act, as there were some powerful vested interests already entrenched in the field of sickness benefits. The Friendly Societies, industrial insurance companies and doctors would all be affected by the intrusion of the state into this kind of benefit provision.The insurance companies and friendly societies collected millions of pounds a year from working-class families, which may explain why it took so long to negotiate suitable compromises and safeguards with the various companies. Wealthier medical practitioners led the opposition from the doctor's organisation and the British Medical Association, because they feared that the status of their profession might be compromised. The British Medical Association was appeased through the panel system, which allowed insured patients to choose their own doctor from the panel of practitioners under the control of a local health committee. This proved popular with the less well off doctors, especially those in the inner cities, who quickly saw that their incomes must rise from this new source of patients.The National Insurance Act was in two distinct parts. Part one dealt with health insurance and part two with unemployment insurance. For health purposes all workers earning less than one hundred and sixty pounds a year and aged between 16 and 60 were included-around 15 million in all. A sickness benefit of 10s per week for 13 weeks (7s 6d for women) and 5s a week for a further 13 weeks there after was the main entitlement. Others included were a 30s maternity grant, 5s a week disability benefits and free medical treatment under a panel doctor. This act was a positive move by the Liberals towards reducing poverty, as due to health levels being so bad at the time many were left sick with no way of receiving money.On the other hand, this Act may not have been very successful due to a number of reasons. The fact that this scheme did not cover hospital treatment, except admission to the sanatorium intended to benefit tuberculosis sufferers, increased the risk of poverty. The Act only covered workers and not their families, which meant that there was still a risk of poverty if a member of the family needed medical treatment. The government did attempt to improve the scheme by abolishing the reduced benefits for the second 13-week period in favour of the full benefit for a period of 26 weeks. Although this was an improvement, many workers were sick for longer than this, especially those who could not afford to pay for hospital treatment. The fact that this scheme was self-contributory reduced its success. Weekly contributions were raised from the worker (4d), the employer (3d) and the government (2d). The worker still did benefit from this if they were sick as the slogan 'nine pence for four pence', used by Lloyd George to popularize this concept shows. However, for many workers, this was just a cut in their wage, and therefore may have further encouraged poverty.Unemployment insurance covered far less workers: some 2.25 million, mainly in construction and engineering trades, which were susceptible to fluctuating employment levels. This insurance also required payment from the worker. Weekly contributions were 2.5d each from workers, employers and the Government, which entitled the workers to a payment of 7s a week for up to a maximum of 15 weeks. As mentioned before, there is an argument that the policy was in fact encouraging poverty, as workers had a pay cut and were only covered for a maximum of 15 weeks, which meant after this period they would have no financial support. The help provided by this scheme was useful to the worker, as it meant they were not immediately poor. It therefore reduced the chances of poverty as people had 15 weeks to look for another source of income. However, people who were already poor when this scheme was introduced were not helped by it, which was a fault from the government's management of the poverty situation.Inflation was reducing the real value of wages. The fact that no minimum wages were set in certain trades makes the government's attempt to improve the poverty situation even worse. A failure to introduce a set amount of working hours adds to this. The Liberals failed in their attempt to introduce an eight-hour day for the mining industry when they achieved power. It took two years to introduce an eight hour mining day in1908, and a further three to pass the 1911 Shops Act, which used the same principle including a half-day closing. Limits on working-hours in other industries were not set, which meant that in many cases people were working long hours for small wages. The government did attempt to improve this by setting up Trade Boards in 1909. They laid down minimum payments in areas where workers were liable to exploitation, where Trade Unions could not protect them. Such industries known as sweated industries included tailoring, box making and lace spinning. The Liberals also extended the Workman's Compensation Act of 1897 in its scope to cover some six million workers from poverty due to injury at work. However, many industries were not covered at all, and this greatly contributed to the growth of poverty. The 'explosion' of trade union activity from 1910-1914 reflects the failure of the Liberals to deal with contemporary social problems. In the main, working people were unimpressed by Liberal reforms; the decline of wages and the increase in job insecurity seemed to outweigh the benefits of any welfare legislation. Although they did not create a welfare state or solve poverty, the Liberals did reduce the chances of poverty for working class families and old aged people, with such legislation as the National Insurance Act and Pensions Bill. The introduction of health inspections, food provision and juvenile courts for children helped to reduce the numbers of homeless, sick and hungry children. They also attempted to regulate the treatment of workers with the introduction of working hours and minimum wages in some industries. The fact that there were huge exclusions to Liberal legislation adds to the idea that Liberal rule was not successful with dealing with poverty and need.In conclusion, there are two views on how successful the Liberals were in dealing with the problems of poverty and need. Firstly, there is a view that legislation was filled with 'holes' causing huge numbers of exclusions to promising schemes from the government, which resulted in an improvement of a reduced size. The government did not introduce laws to deal with the poor, but to in fact to prevent more poverty, as social security for the working class was made more possible mainly through contributions from the working class. They also failed to introduce direct measures to deal with the situation, such as government housing or a National Health Service. Therefore, Liberal legislation was successful on a small scale considering it did not effectively improve the poverty levels of the whole nation.Lastly, it can be argued that the Liberal rule was very successful in terms of the scale of task with which the new government was faced. The fact that the House of Lords was mainly Conservative meant that the Liberal legislation programme was regularly opposed, because Conservatives regarded Liberal policies as confiscation to property rights and a threat to any idea of individual responsibility. This can justify the amount of time taken to introduce various laws, such as the National Insurance Act and the Pensions Act. The amount of people below the poverty line at the time was estimated at being as high as one third of the population. A view that no other government could have dealt with the situation of poverty any more effectively at that time adds to the theory that the Liberals were as successful as they could have been under the circumstances. Liberal legislation between the years of 1906 to 1914 laid the foundations of a welfare state. The time spent in power may not have been long enough for the Liberal reform to make a clear improvement to the poverty situation due to the social state of the nation being so bad.This view shows that the Liberals were very successful at dealing with the situation if considering the magnitude of task they undertook.
