Social policy and change in the IWYs

Question 1

what does social policy concern

Answer 1

• national insurance benefits for unemployment and healthcare
• housing
• education
• young children

Question 2

what does the nature of unemployment in the IWYs expose

Answer 2

the weaknesses of national insurance established in 1911 which only provided 15 weeks of benefit to workers of the ‘insured trades

Question 3

why was the national insurance established in 1911 weak

Answer 3

• small
• for a limited time
• did not cover all workers
• married women who did not work received a little help beyond initial motherhood

Question 4

what was government finance spent on

Answer 4

• war debt
• unemployment benefit
• left very little for the demands and cost of reforms to build ‘ homes fit for heroes’ as promised by DLG

Question 5

what illustrated the consequences for social policy

Answer 5

• Geddes Axe
• May committee

Question 6

government reforms concerning unemployment benefit

Answer 6

• created a systme that paid beneift to an insured worker for 6 months
• benefit to an uninsured worker, subject to a means test carried out by Public assistance committees (PACs)
• NI for healthcare was extended in 1WW and increased in value
• but in 1920 main failings of the 1911 act remained
• only covered the insured worker, not his wife,children or dependent
• BMA estimated a family of 5 needed 23s/week (excluding rent) but only got 30s/week

Question 7

state pension

Answer 7

• increased to 10 s
• remained means tested
• tiny
• payable at 70
• more generous contributory pension was established in 1925
• payable after 65
• but based on contributions and not taxes
• based on work, something women ceased to do after marriage foe were reliant on the old version

Question 8

Edwardian reforms for medical inspection and school meals

Answer 8

• exposed as weeks since it was based on local authority finances
• areas that needed greater support for poor children had the least resources
• medical inspectors thought it better to feed children than inspect them and find their wanting
• but less than 200 thousand children out of 4m got a free school meal by 1939

Question 9

fisher education act

Answer 9

• 1918
• illustrated the combination of initial good intentions meeting the realities of a declining economy governed by orthodoxy and retrenchment
• no government ensured the raising of the school leaving age to 14 was achieved
• nursery and continuation schools (lost to Geddes)
• raising of school leaving ate to 12 had led to school dropping nursery education as they could not afford both
• creation of secondary education lost (opposed by geddes axe, trade unions and employers) although recommended by the Hadow report of 1936
• grammar schools were the only secondary provisioning and these required selection and payment of fees
• fisher estimated that in 1919 2m educationally qualified children did not go to school as they could not afford it
• only 10% of W/C children went to secondary school