Welfare State - Results

Results

This policy resulted in massive expenditure and a great widening of what was considered to be the state's responsibility. In addition to the central services of education, health, unemployment and sickness allowances, the welfare state also included the idea of increasing redistributive taxation, increasing regulation of industry food and housing (better safety regulations, weights and measures controls, etc.)

However the initial foundation of the National Health Service (NHS) did not involve building new hospitals but merely the nationalisation of existing municipal and charitable foundations. The aim was not to substantially increase provision but to standardise care across the country; indeed Beveridge believed that the overall cost of medical care would decrease, as people became healthier and so needed less treatment. Instead the cost rose dramatically, from £9 billion in 1948 (accounting for inflation) to £106 billion in 2011, and charges (for dentures, spectacles and prescriptions) were introduced in 1951 (by the same Labour government that had founded the NHS three years earlier). Despite this, the principle of health care "free at the point of use" became a central idea of the welfare state, which later governments, critical of the Welfare State, were unable to reverse. The classic Welfare State period lasted from approximately 1945 to the late-1970s, when policies under Thatcherism began to privatise public institutions, although many features remain today, including compulsory National Insurance contributions, and the provision of old age pensions.

The Labour Party, standing in 1945 on a programme of establishing a Welfare State, won a clear victory. However, since the 1980s the British government has begun to reduce some provisions in England: for example, free eye tests for all have now been stopped and prescription charges for drugs have constantly risen since they were first introduced in 1951. Policies differ in different countries of the United Kingdom, but the provision of a welfare state is still a basic principle of government policy in the United Kingdom today.