Need For Family Allowance example essay topic

316 words
The problem of low paid workers with large families was to become a big issue in Britain after the war. It was argued by an economic adviser to the government that family allowances would set off some of the regressive effects from lower levels of income, which were discovered from the 1941 Budget. Ernest Bevin also argued that if prices and supplies were controlled then the union's opposition of controlled wages would be unnecessary. Also since industrial conflicts were a result from the previous war the government avoided wage controls and choose instead to rely on voluntary restraint.

But this system turned out to useless in the way of removing the problems of the insufficient ness of low wages to meet the needs of larger families. As a result in 1941 the Labour party and the unions began to support the idea of family allowances. They did not believe that by increasing wages would work as a solution to low paid workers with large families. Instead they claimed that not only that wages had declined during the wartime and prises were to high and also that by giving the workers longer hours or overtime would not improve their situations. In June 1941 a request for an investigation for a scheme of family allowance was made by all of the MPs that resulted into a government White Paper publish ment in May 1942 as "Family Allowance" which underlined the main arguments for family allowance.

The Labour party wanted a non-contributory scheme, which included all children. Dec 1942 Beveridge also pointed out the much need for family allowance were he argued that every child in the family should get paid a certain amount. The Government agreed to Beveridge's proposal on family allowance but the first child would not be paid. Reference 1 turn to last page.