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British Social Policy, 1945 - 1990

Social Policy

Social policy is based on the State's control and responsibility for social security, social services, health, education, employment and housing. The provision of these services is known collectively as the Welfare State. The provision of social services cannot be separated from other aspects of public policy, such as responsibility for law and order, defence and economic management. Thus, social policy encompasses everything to do with the state's ability to influence the structure of society and the provision and allocation of goods and services in society. Peter Townsend writes
If social policy is conceived of as the institutional control of services, agencies and organizations to maintain or change social structure of values, then what is at stake is not just the social division of welfare or the management of public, fiscal and private welfare, but the allocation of wealth, the organization of employment, the management of the wage system and the creation of styles of living.
In other words, a government cannot make decisions regarding the provision of a social service without influencing the whole social structure.
We will review the implications of this by examining British Social Policy between the conclusion of the Second World War, in 1945, and the fall of Thatcher in 1990.
The period divides into three phases: the post war phase (1945 — 1974); the period of economic crisis (1974 — 1979); and the Thatcher period (1979 — 1990). The economic crisis continued into the 1980s and the period 1974 — 1979 can be regarded as an “interregnum period” of transition, when the emphasis in public policy shifted from a concern with welfare to a concern with the economy.

Principles in social policy

In social policy universalism is the principle that every citizen should be provided with a service as a right. Selectivity is the opposed principle that a welfare services should be provided on the basis of a criterion of need, and applicants should be means-tested for it.
An institutional concept of welfare takes the view that welfare services are part of the normal functioning of society. A residual concept of welfare is opposed to this — the welfare service only comes into effect when the normal structures fail.

The liberal and social democratic consensus, 1945 - 1974

The first period of post-war British social policy saw the introduction of the Welfare State in the form that we now know it. During the period of the post-war boom, expenditure on welfare steadily increased, and there was a consensus between the parties in favour of a mixed economy. This is known as the liberal and social democratic welfare state, or also as the liberal consensus. This was also the period of Keynesian economics, which is posited on the belief that governments can control demand in the economy to ensure full employment. Social policy was universalistic and institutionalist.
Part of the consensus was a movement by the Labour party away from traditional Marxism. Although, during 1945 to 1951 the Labour party had created a consensus between those in the party who equated socialism with public ownership, and those who equated it with social policy, the emphasis increasingly fell on social policy as the true expression of socialism, rather than on public ownership.
Professor Titmus of the London School of Economics was an influential social scientist who wrote “that universal social institutions that met the needs of the whole population were the only way in which a modern nation-state could be held together as an organic whole”. He influenced the Labour politician, Anthony Crossland, who in The Future of Socialism (1956) rejected the traditional Marxist line on ownership of the means of production, and instead advocated that social policy was the centre of socialism. This was also supported by the impact of the American economist, John Kenneth Galbraith's writings, especially his book The Affluent Society, which preached that public expenditure on the environment and social goods was being neglected in favour of excessive private consumption.
The Conservatives came to power in 1951 when the Labour government had run out of steam. They were aided by the revival of the economy after the end of the Korean war and with improvements in the terms of trade for Britain. Thus income tax reductions were made in 1952, 1953 and 1954. However, they still needed to control public expenditure firmly. They made some unpopular cuts in spending on education, and reduced education expenditure by 5%. In June 1952 prescription charges were introduced at the rate of 5p (one shilling) for each prescription form. The new prescription charges did not succeed in clawing back the expenditure on the health service. For instance, the government had to pay for a doctors' pay rise awarded during the previous Labour administration. Hospital capital expenditure was tightly controlled. However, the government was forced to introduce a major hospital building programme, and the country's district hospitals stem from this time. In December 1951 a freeze on hospital administrative staff was imposed. Thus from 1951 to 1956 the share of GDP spent on social security, health and education hardly increased, and remained steady at just over 11%. However, this was partly possible because the economy was doing well, and rising tax revenues meant that more fundamental ways of cutting public expenditure did not have to be considered.
The Labour government that came to power in October 1964 had a manifesto with many social policy commitments. Their legislative programme was interrupted by their loss of office in 1970, but it was resumed almost where it had been left-off when they returned to power in 1974, and the intervening Conservative government, 1970-74, under Mr. Heath, was not able to reverse the process. Social policy became even more central to the Labour Party's ideology.
Despite modest growth rates of 2.5% per annum and inflation and unemployment between 1-2% per annum, Britain was lagging behind her European neighbours. When Wilson succeeded Gaitskell, who died in 1963, reviving the economy was his priority. But the social programme the Labour party were proposing was linked to their belief that the country's growth rate could be boosted to the levels of Europe, and this was to prove misguided.
Yet the Labour post-war epoch was largely successful in its aim of increasing public spending. It aimed at an increase of 6.6% per annum in real terms and achieved 6.5%, despite a sterling crisis. The social security budget increased from 7.2% of GDP to 9.3% between 1964/5 and 1969/70. However, this is partly attributable to rises in unemployment; but even when adjusted for this, the rise was from 7.2% to 8.6%.

The 'interregnum', 1974 - 1979

Following the 1974 quadrupling of the oil price and the subsequent shock to the world economy and resultant world economy, Britain's long-term structural problems were exposed, and Britain experienced a period of economic crisis during which unemployment and inflation both rose.
Anthony Crosland, a member of the Labour Cabinet wrote in 1975, 'The party is over'. The first consequence of the economic crisis was that the growth of public spending as a proportion of national income was checked; from 1981 to 1990 it declined. The crisis was marked by a decline in British manufacturing; both left and right wing politicians attributed the crisis partly to the influence of the welfare state, and the climate in regard to social policy reversed. The Labour Prime Minister, James Callaghan, marked the change in policy in his speech at the trade union college at Oxford, Ruskin College, in 1977 when he made education for the “needs of the economy” the priority.
The Labour administrations Wilson (1974 — 76) and Callaghan (1976 — 79) sought to shift the emphasis of public policy from Keynesian demand management to monetarism, that is, control of the supply of money in the economy in order to reduce inflation. Curbing inflation became the prime target of the government. The government attempted to control wage-cost inflation through voluntary agreement, social compact, with the Trades Unions. However, this failed and by 1978/9 there was a 'winter of discontent' as attempts to continue to hold down public sector pay resulted in a series of large scale public sector strikes. The government fell as a consequence. Unemployment rose from 3% in 1974 to 12% in 1982/3, reaching 3 million in the early 1980s. The assumption of social policy that full employment could be achieved had been destroyed.

The Thatcher epoch, 1979 — 1990

Margaret Thatcher completed the shift of economic policy from Keynesian demand management to monetarism, and reversed the ideological commitment to a notion of increasing social services. She sought to curb public expenditure on social services. However, in this she was not successful, since the long-term trend towards increasing expenditure in social services was too great for her to stop.
Margaret Thatcher sought to redefine Conservativism — it had made the error since the war of compromising with socialism. She has written in The Downing Street Years, (1993) that
The final illusion — that state intervention would promote social harmony and solidarity or, in Tory language, 'One Nation' — collapsed in the 'winter of discontent' when the dead went unburied, critically ill patients were turned away from hospitals by pickets, and the prevailing mood was one of snarling envy and motiveless hostility. [Margaret Thatcher, The Downing Street Years, Harper Collins, 1993]
She also caught the prevailing mood of the country. People had swung in favour of the idea of inequality as introducing incentives; the sale of council houses was a popular measure. People had occupational pensions.
However, the fundamental changes in policy were introduced by Labour from 1976 onwards. After the IMF visit in 1976 the priority in policy shifted towards combating inflation and limiting pay in the public services. There were some restraints on public expenditure imposed in 1976. The Conservatives in office from 1979 onwards imposed greater restrictions. Howe in his first budget speech (June 1979) advocated increasing personal incentives by reducing direct taxation and the scale of state activity. Yet he increased National Insurance contributions, and reduced the state contribution to the National Insurance Fund from 18% in 1980 to nothing by 1989. Actually, government expenditure did not decrease in real terms, since it was committed to honouring public sector pay awards of the previous government, increasing expenditure on defence and the police and forced to increase welfare payments by the rise in unemployment. The major area of cuts was in housing, and education also suffered from real cuts. Thus, as O'Higgins [M. O'Higgins, Rolling back the Welfare State: the rhetoric and reality ... in C. Jones and J. Stevenson (eds), The Year Book of Social Policy in Britain (1982), Routledge and Keegan Paul, London 1983.] has put it “beliefs that it [the Conservative government] would lead to radical changes in the welfare state are, so far, largely unfounded, not so much because the Government has changed its mind as because it has been unable to implement its rhetoric.”
This was proven true when the recommendations of the Conservative Central Policy Review Staff for “fundamental change” was leaked to the Economist by the left wing (the 'wets') of the Conservative party, and Thatcher announced that none of its proposals would be pursued.
The 1988 Conservative Party election victory was on the basis of further radical reforms. This was an attempt to restore the ideological commitment of the Conservative party to curbing public expenditure and introducing market forces. Thatcher sensed the public dissatisfaction with state services and the lack of choice that it provided. Education was targeted for reform also, and work was begun on devising a National Curriculum.
However, the trend towards increasing expenditure on social services continued. For example, whilst public expenditure on health between 1983 and 1987 barely increased in real terms. However, demands on the health service by an ageing population were increasing at a rate of 1% per annum. Thus, waiting lists were growing. Margaret Thatcher wanted a profound rethinking of health spending, but she was opposed by the Treasury on the grounds that it was economically sensible!
It would not be correct, however, to see the Thatcher period more as a period of continuity than of change. There are aspects of both. The long-term trend of the C20th towards the increasing influence of the state and expenditure of the services it provided did not change, though perhaps it was slowed down. On the other hand, changes in ideology regarding thinking about the welfare state did change. Social services became selective and residual. These are most marked in regard to taxation and income distribution.

Taxation and income distribution

The Conservatives reduced the lowest band of income tax from 33% to 25% (20% for the very lowest incomes) by 1994. However, the overall tax burden did not alter, and the difference was largely made up by increases in Value Added Tax, which fell disproportionately on the poor. Thus the coming of Margaret Thatcher also marked a reversal of the C20th trend towards equalization of incomes and living standards. This occurred both in the USA and Britain around this time. The reversal was brought on partly by the decline of the old industries but also by the shift from full-time to part-time work. Additionally, the proportion of females in the work-force increased. Female participation increased from 53% to 65% between 1973 and 1991 (including part-time employment), while male participation fell from 93% to 86% in the same period. Manufacturing employment fell by a half between 1971 and 1991. This was counterbalanced by increasing numbers of service jobs, but these were mostly part-time jobs and taken up by women. The Rowntree Inquiry into Income and Wealth (1995) confirmed the reversal of the trend towards increasing income equality.
During the Thatcher period the Conservatives still sought to curb expenditure, and did so, to an extent, by making cuts in social security. Firstly, earnings-related unemployment supplement and sickness benefits were abolished in June 1982 on the grounds that these created a poverty trap; after that unemployment benefit and supplementary benefits to the unemployed were made taxable. A long-term study of unemployment has concluded that for young people the changes did create so incentive to return to work faster, but for older people, there was very little effect. [Narendranathan et al. Unemployment benefits revisited, Centre for Labour Economics Discussion Paper, No. 153, London School of Economics, London, 1983] There were changes to sickness benefits, and the Housing Benefit Act of 1982 made employers responsible for 'Statutory Sick Pay' for the first eight weeks of sickness. Employers could reclaim the money by reducing National Insurance contributions.
The policy on how benefits would be 'uprated' — that is increased on a year by year basis — was changed. After 1982 uprating took place only in line with inflation. There was a review of the extent to which benefits were targeted. However, the review team discovered that benefits in the UK were already highly targeted, and created, if anything, a poverty trap. There were some changes to the benefits system to an extent which slightly improved the poverty trap and did not make substantial changes in public expenditure.
The Conservatives also sought to cap claims by the poor for discretionary payments — and they established the principle that cash grants for such things as furniture were repayable loans from the Social Fund, that they established. This was introduced in the 1986 Social Security Act. This act established (1) a common set of rules for means-tested entitlements; (2) replaced the Family Income Supplement by Family Credit; (3) replaced Supplementary Benefit by Income Support; (4) Recipients on income support had to pay 20% of rates and the new poll tax. However, the impact of these measures is calculated to have been minimal overall. The social security budget was scarcely affected, though incomes among the poor were redistributed.

Pensions

An Interdepartmental Committee on Social Insurance and Allied Services — also known as the Beveridge Committee — was established in June 1941 and reported in December, 1942. The report proposed the unification of the hotchpotch existing system of insurance into a single system of social insurance. Beveridge introduced the idea of state pensions for the elderly in his report. His report proposed a pension well below this level. In fact, the Labour government was forced to set pensions at much higher levels.
During the post-war period the Conservatives wanted to ditch the Beveridge philosophy, but couldn't challenge it openly, so they appointed another committee and the chairmanship of Phillips. The report did state that the attempt to provide all pensioners with a basic pension regardless of their means was 'an extravagant use of the community's resources'. The Government accepted this report, and by doing so rejected the Beveridge plan. However, in both 1959 and 1964, with elections looming, the Conservatives were forced to respond to Labour criticisms that they were allowing pensioners to slip into poverty, by increasing basic pensions. By 1963 the married couple's pension was 33.7% of average national earnings, compared to 30.5% in 1948; however, in the same period National Assistance benefits were lower than those paid in 1938.
Thus during the post-war period, there was increasing commitment to the concept of state pensions. For example, the flat rate pension and other benefits were increased in March 1965. In addition to basic benefits for sickness and unemployment, earnings-related benefits were added. The old Ministries of Pensions and National Insurance were abolished and replaced by a single Ministry of Social Security. The old National Assistance Board was abolished and replaced by the Supplementary Benefits Commission.
The Thatcher epoch reversed this trend. After 1982 uprating of pensions took place only in line with inflation. As a consequence, the basic pension fell from 23% of average male earnings in 1981 to 15% by 1993. It is expected to fall to 10% by 2010. It is expected that state pensions will be phased out altogether.
A legacy of the 'interregnum period' was State Earnings Related Pension Scheme (SERPS) which took effect from April 1978. Pensions paid on the scheme were to be built up over 20 years; full pensions would be paid in 1998. The calculation of the pension would be based on the twenty best years of a person's working life. People staying at home to bring up children would be counted as contributors to the scheme. The Thatcher government also considered abolishing the States Earnings Related Pension Scheme (SERPS) but discovered that on analysis its abolition would actually cost the treasury £1bn and not save money.

Education

The Butler 1944 Education Act provided the concept of free secondary education for all. However, the legacy of inequalities was continued with the introduction of the tripartite system of (1) grammar schools; (2) secondary modern schools; (3) Technical schools, and local education authorities were not encouraged to create multilateral (comprehensive) schools. At first the Ministry of Education consistently rejected plans for comprehensive schools. The 1950 Labour Party Conference once again called for comprehensive education, and in 1951 issued a policy document contradicting the government's policy.
Crosland was made Secretary of State for Education in 1965 when the Wilson government came into power. He was charged with the mission of making education fairer. There was a lot of support for the idea of abolishing the 11-plus exam, and the consequent segregation of students into grammar schools and secondary modern schools at secondary school level. The civil service advised the government not to introduce legislation to this effect, and instead a circular, Circular 10/65, was set around local education authorities stating that government policy was to abolish the eleven-plus exam and selective secondary schools; local authorities were asked to produce plans for non-selective secondary education within a year.
As a result, by 1970, most local areas were pressing ahead with plans to switch to a comprehensive system. Mrs. Thatcher withdrew the circular when she became Secretary of State for Education in 1970, but by then the movement in favour of Comprehensive schools was well under way, and more comprehensive schools were created during her period of office than before it.
However, the mood in favour of reintroducing competition and inequality was exemplified by Thatcher government introducing an Assisted Places Scheme, providing 35,000 places at selected independent schools for children of parents with low incomes, with parents paying fees on an income-related sliding scale. Apart from that, there was little change in educational policy.
During the 1980s there was some decentralization of control of school budgets, with schools receiving increased authority to spend their own budgets as they wished. The 1987 Manifesto promised to extend budgetary control to all schools. Local authorities would not longer be able to limit the size of a popular school, and school budgets would increase with pupil numbers. The Education Reform Act of 1988 (1) required the Secretary of State to establish a National Curriculum with attainment targets at 7, 11, 14 and 16; (2) created uniform testing of pupils at these ages; (3) allowed schools to opt-out of local council control and be directly funded by central government; they would be called grant maintained schools; (4) made polytechnics independent of local authorities, and polytechnics later became universities; (5) created a new University Funding Council and abolished tenure for academics.

The National Health Service

Beveridge did not found the National Health Service. Its main contribution to health was, by including National Health within his report, to help to galvanize the Ministry of Health into its own action. In the wake of the Beveridge Report the Ministry of Health was forced to make a proposal for a public health service. The Ministry was opposed by the British Medical Association. The doctors did not wish to become salaried public servants. It was believed that a universal scheme of National Insurance would decrease doctors' income from private fees. In order to win support for his plan, Labour minister for Health, Bevan horse traded with the BMP — he allowed doctors to retain fee income from private patients — as private fees would come as extras, consultants would gain both the security of the state salary and the bonus of the extra fee income.
The National Health Service act of 1946 established
1 The National Health service would be a national service paid for principally by general taxation, with a small token contribution from the National Insurance fund.
2 All citizens could register with a family doctor of their own choice
3 GPs remained private professionals with the option of forming partnerships.
4 Hospital attendance was free. Hospitals would be owned and run by the national government.
5 Prescriptions, eye-tests and spectacles were free.
There has been an emphasis in social policy towards universalism and institutionalism. It was possible to 'dream' in the immediate post war period of an eventual phasing out of the private sector in health care. Once again, the Thatcher period has reversed this trend. The first two terms of the Thatcher period largely left the Health Service untouched, excepting that public expenditure on health between 1983 and 1987 barely increased in real terms. However, demands on the health service by an ageing population were increasing at a rate of 1% per annum. Thus, waiting lists were growing. Margaret Thatcher wanted a profound rethinking of health spending, but she was opposed by the Treasury on the grounds that the National Health Service was economically sensible!
The National Health Service and Community Care Act, 1990 (1) allowed hospitals and community services to opt out of direct control by district health authorities. They could set up trusts and be directly accountable to the Secretary of State, and by 1995 almost all hospitals and community services had become trusts. (2) The duty of district health authorities was redefined to be the task of determining the health needs of their district and negotiating contracts with hospitals and community services to provide them. They could go outside their district for this. The district would be funded directly by central government. (3) General Practitioners with more than 9,000 patients could choose to manage their own budgets for the purchase of non-emergency services for their patients.
The effect on community care of the reforms was ironically to create an effective voucher scheme for the care of the elderly. People could place their elderly relatives in a home and central government would have to pay for it under their own rules. Thus, social security spending on residential care rose from £10m in 1979 to £2,072m in 1991. In response, Roy Griffiths persuaded Margaret Thatcher to remove care of the elderly from the social security system and give it to local authorities. The 1990 NHS and Community Care Act effected this transfer of responsibility.
Thus in the Health service there was also continuity between the post-war and the Thatcher period, although area health authorities were abolished, and a system of general management was introduced to run each hospital and district.

Housing

By 1945 200,000 houses had been destroyed and 250,000 badly damaged. Between 1945 and 1948 there was a sharp increase in the birth-rate. Nearly half of all houses did not have a separate bathroom. 40% of houses did not have a bath at all. 25% of houses did not have the sole use of a lavatory.
The primary objective was simply to build houses. There was no central plan or committee dealing with this problem. Without a plan, the government in 1945 had to act very quickly. Bevan decided that only local authorities would be able to respond. Bevan proposed that for every house that the local authorities built, there would be a subsidy to the local authority for the next 60 years to pay for the loan they would have to incur to build it.
However, most people were still tenants of private landlords, and an unrestricted market would have led to very high rents. Rent controls had been introduced at the beginning of the Second World War and were retained at the end of it. The result was that the private sector was not induced to contribute to the post-war housing effort — there was no profit in it.
Thus, the effect of the post-war period was to place the provision of housing at the centre of social policy, and the private sector was controlled and positively discriminated against. The Conservative governments of this period could tinker with this ideological commitment, but not reverse it.
The Conservative Rent Act of 1957 was a contentious piece of legislation, but was based on the logic of allowing landlords to charge market rates for rented accommodation. The market had to operate freely. Thus the act provided for decontrolling of rents in certain categories. There was an enormous outcry. Inside London controlled rents rose from 70p a week in 1957 to £1.22 in 1959; outside London they rose from 47p to 65p a week. Yet, the Conservative policy of decontrol did not succeed in reviving the market for private rented accommodation — private landlord dwellings declined from 6 million in England and Wales in 1953 to 4.5 million in 1961 and 3.3 million in 1971.
The Thatcher government broke sharply with the tradition of state provision of housing. In the 1980 Housing Act, council tenants of three years' standing were given the right to buy their houses at discount rates, beginning at 1/3rd of the market value and rising to 50% for long-term tenants; this figure was increased to 70% by 1989 in some situations. Sale of council houses increased to 250,000 per annum by 1982. The proportion of all housing owned by local councils fell from 1/3rd in 1979 to 1/5th by 1994. By 1991 most of the tenants of the local authorities and housing associations were the very poor. The government also switched their financial support for new housing from councils to non-profit housing associations. During the 1980s they withdrew the subsidies to councils to keep council rents down, and councils were forced to raise rents in line with those set by the private sector and housing associations. However, poorer tenants could still claim housing benefits and the effect was to increase the social security budget.

Social policy and gender discrimination : equal Pay

Historically, successive governments simply accepted that there was unequal pay between men and women, and did nothing about it. As early as 1949 there had been a Royal Commission on Equal Pay.
The Equal Pay Act of 1979 drew a distinction between earnings that were the consequence of different worth and earnings that were different despite equal worth, and defined the latter to be discrimination. Thus, the act dealt only with differences within a firm, so if a firm employed almost all women, then it was not covered by the Act. Nonetheless, following the Act, women's hourly earnings rose quite sharply. The median average hourly pay of women relative to men rose from 63% in 1972 to 73% in 1976, reaching 79% in 1991. The Sex Discrimination Act of 1975 gave women in theory equal access to all jobs, but in practice women continued to work in lower-paid and part-time employment. In 1975 the Employment Protection Act introduced statutory maternity provision.
It was recognized that by granting married men a tax allowance for their wife, the tax system made husbands better off than wives, thus reversing the policy of the equal pay acts. In 1989 the married man's allowance became the married couple's allowance and either partner could claim it. Partners could also opt for separate assessment, which later became automatic, thus making husbands and wives separate for tax purposes. From 1993 the value of the married couples' allowance was reduced.

The State and Private Morality

The State controls personal behaviour by (a) establishing marriage as the legal basis for cohabitation; (b) determining the age of consent to sexual intercourse; (c) making certain types of intercourse illegal; (d) defining under what circumstances abortion is legal. Any government has to distinguish between what is the responsibility of the family and what is the responsibility of the state. The government also has an effect on the position of women by its influence over employment legislation and its policy over child care. Generally, British people believe that the family should be a private sphere into which the government should not intrude. However, the state has invaded this sphere in order to protect children that are the victims of abuse. There is also a debate as to whether it should protect women from domestic violence and in regard to divorce. During the 1960s the state's influence over sexual morality decreased; however, in the 1990s the Conservatives sought to reinstate the state's right to legislate over morality and defend the traditional family. The role of the state in regard to sexual matters came under attack during the war and in subsequent years. The availability of contraception made it easier for people explore sex without guilt.
Homosexuality and the law
After the conclusion of the Second World War, Theobald Mathew was appointed Director of Public Prosecutions and was given a remit to prosecute homosexuals; homosexual practices being still illegal. Convictions for gross indecency rose from 800 per annum in the pre-war period to 2,300 in 1953. However, the policy became unpopular. In 1952 the Church of England's Moral Welfare Council recommended reform, and in 1954 the Home Secretary, Maxwell-Fyfe appointed the Wolfenden Commission to examine homosexuality and prostitution. The Wolfendon Report was published in 1957. The Wolfendon Report defined the duty of the state in relation to the private lives of individual as “to preserve public order and decency, to protect the citizen from what is offensive or injurious, and to provide sufficient safeguards against exploitation and corruption of others”. It goes on to state that “It is not ... the function of the law to intervene in the private lives of citizens, or to seek to enforce any particular pattern of behaviour further than is necessary to carry out the purposes we have outlined.” Such a conclusion makes private sexual acts between consenting adults outside the domain of state intervention. However, adoption of such a policy was still politically risky, and it was not until the 1967 Sexual Offences Act that homosexual acts between consenting males over the age of 21 was decriminalized.
However, there was a backlash against this policy brought on by AIDS. The public associated AIDS with homosexuality, and by 1988 the Local Government Act did include clauses requiring that a local authority shall not “intentionally promote homosexuality..”. Nonetheless, in 1994 an amendment to the Criminal Justice Bill proposed that the age of consent for homosexuals be lowered to 16, and it was in fact lowered to 18.
Abortion and the law
At first there was little support for decriminalizing abortion, and a debate on the subject in the House of Commons in 1952 lasted only one minute. However, the 1961 thalidomide tragedy placed abortion back on the agenda and by 1962 an opinion poll showed that 73% of the public were in favour of abortion when the foetus was deformed. In 1967 the Liberal MP, David Steele introduced a private member's bill for abortion reform. This was passed as the Abortion Act of 1967. This made it legal for a woman to have an abortion up to 28 weeks into pregnancy provided two doctors gave their consent and only if (a) the child would be born handicapped; or (b) the life of the pregnant woman would be at risk. Thus, the act by no means introduced abortion on demand. Abortion has always been a controversial issue, and there were 16 attempts to change the Act between 1968 and the 1990s, none of which succeeded. In 1990 the Human Fertilization and Embryology Act reduced the period from twenty-eight to twenty-four weeks.
Divorce
The divorce laws were reformed with the purpose of reducing the intrusion of the state into marriages that had failed. Until the reforms it was not possible to obtain a divorce unless adultery was proven, and in some cases this required an “arranged” adultery. The Labour government set up a Law Commission to review the law, and it recommended that facilitating divorce with enable remarriage and reduce the number of extra-marital affairs, thus supporting, not undermining the institution of marriage. The Divorce Reform Act of 1969 introduced a 'no fault' divorce on the grounds of 'irretrievable breakdown” which would be established by one of five ways: (a) adultery; (b) unreasonable behaviour; (c) two years' desertion; (d) if both parties consented to the divorce, then two years' separation; (e) if the divorce was contested then five years separation. The Act came into force only with the passing of the Matrimonial Proceedings and Property Act 1970, which increased the rights of the 'weaker' party with regard to property. The 1973 Matrimonial Causes Act consolidated this legislation, and also made it illegal to petition for a divorce until at least three years of marriage had elapsed. The 1984 Matrimonial and Family Proceedings Act regulated in regard to the scale of the maintenance paid, and it was expected that ex-wives would earn an income, and that maintenance payments would reflect this.
Lone parents
The Victorian tradition discriminated between lone parents who were 'at fault' for being lone parents, and those that were not. The 1834 Poor Law regarded widows as the responsibility of the state, since they had not caused their condition, and relief was granted to them. In the 1920s widows' pensions were introduced. Beveridge redefined the distinction between the deserving and the undeserving lone parent, regarding unmarried mothers as outside the insurance-based scheme, and all other lone parents as within it.
The numbers of lone parents increased. In 1961, 2.5% of households were lone parents; in 1971 it was 3.5%; 1981, 5.8%; 1991, 6.5%. The Finer Report of 1974 proposed to introduce a maintenance allowance for all lone parents, making the state responsible for recouping the maintenance from the father. However, by 1994 interest in this expensive proposal had decreased, and it was never made into an act.
Domestic violence
The scale of domestic violence was first made apparent when a group of women in Chiswick, investigating shop prices, interviewed women and made alarming discoveries. In response they set up a Chiswick Women's Refuge, and this brought wider public attention. It was recognized that whilst criminal law made it a criminal offence for a man to assault his wife, the laws was not enforced because the police were not empowered to enter the home. The 1976 Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act and the 1978 Domestic Proceedings and Magistrates' Courts Act, empowered victims of domestic violence in marriage and in cohabiting couples to obtain molestation orders and injunctions. However, the courts often continued to use the tactic of binding both parties to keep the peace, thus perpetuating the notion that the victim in domestic violence is also guilty of provoking the attack. In 1986 the Metropolitan Police Force's Working Party into Domestic Violence reported that police response to domestic violence was inadequate, and from 1989 onwards special police units to deal with domestic violence were established in some regions. The provision of refuges by local authorities has been hampered by spending constraints, and refuges are mostly provided by voluntary organizations.