How Far Was The Labour Government Of 1945-50

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It could be argued that the Labour government of 1945-50 accurately created the welfare state when they introduced the National Health Service (NHS) Act in 1948 where every citizen is entitled to free health services. This was seen as the most important reform of the Labour government of 1945-50. The NHS Act 1948 gave free access to medical care to all members in society of a wide range nature, all members of the country were given free access to GP services, dentist, optician and hospitals. They were all to be provided for free at the point of use based on their citizenship right not the individual ability to pay for it (Fyrth, 1995; Page, 2008). According to Heyck (2008) Bevan, minister of health for Labour government 1945-50, was determined …show more content…

There was a high demand for housing as there was a rise in the number of women and servicemen returned home from the war, many of them wanted to marry and start families. Not only this, there were also fears of homelessness and this raised the need for more housing in the country (Glennerster, 2000). Bevan wanted the new houses to be built as much higher a standard than it was already being discussed at the council in order to improve the living standard of the people. Labour government 1945-50 wanted to build quality housing and not quantity for the people. They claimed that working class people were to live in a quality housing as the middle class. Jones (1994) claims that, Bevan gave priority to rented public housing as private houses and to better the standard than the pre-war levels, so he insisted on 900 square feet of a room space per house against the established standards of 750. It was estimated that for every family to have a home of its own,it would require three-quarter new homes. It can be deducted from this that despite the difficult circumstances, Labour succeeded to build over one million new houses by 1951 which was still not enough, however a significant achievement for the Labour government 1945-50 (Bochel, 1992; Glennerster,

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