Liberal Government's Attitudes To Poverty

After the surveys by Booth and Rowntree revealed that 35% of people in London and 20-30% of people in York were in poverty, as well as worries over National Security as 25% of volunteers for the army to fight in the Boer war were turned away for bad health, the Liberal government realised that poverty was a huge problem that needed to be fixed quickly. Prior to this the government’s attitude to poverty was “Laissez Faire” which means leaving things alone. The government thought if you were in poverty it was your own fault and was up to you to get yourself out of it. The investigations by booth and Rowntree highlighted 5 main groups of people that needed the most assistance to get out of poverty, so the Liberals introduced acts to help: young …show more content…
The Old Aged Pensions act was introduced in 1908. It said that as long as you had used to have an income over 12 shillings, single men and women over the age of 70 got up to 5 shillings a week whereas married couples could get 7 shillings and 6 pence a week. This evidence shows that the government was willing to help people who were no longer able to help themselves. However the problems with this were that the life expectancy at this time was 45 for men and 48 for women, so many people did not live long enough to claim their pension and Rowntree said that people needed 7 shillings a week to survive, so this petition was not high enough. This shows that the government were taking a step in the right direction but there was parts of the act that still needed fixed. The Liberals Reforms of 1906-1914 improved the lives of the elderly in Britain fairly successfully; however some things still needed to be changed, such as lowering the pension age and increasing the pension amount. The Liberals were less successful in improving the lives of the old than they were with the lives of the young. This was because although the Liberals introduces the old aged pension, there was still many restrictions on it that many old poor people could no claim, whereas under the acts for children more people benefited from health care and the protection that the …show more content…
So in 1909 Labour Exchanges were set up. These were essentially job centres that allowed people to look for work and employers look for employees. This shows that the government were making an effort to get unemployed people into work. In the late half of 1911 the National Insurance Act Part 2 was introduced, which gave unemployed people up to 7 shillings unemployment benefit for up to 15 weeks in a year. By 1913, this act insures around 2.3 million people and there were plans to extent do other trades. This shows that the government realised that is the bread winner in the family lost their job the whole family would fall into poverty. The Liberals fairly improved the lives of unemployed people; however there were still problems like the 1909 Labour Exchanges act not being compulsory which meant that many jobs were not advertised. The Liberals were less successful in significantly improving the lives of unemployed workers than they were in improving the lives of children. This was because some acts such as, 1911 national insurance act part 2, only included 7 trades such as shipbuilding and construction whereas the acts to help children helped most