The Quest for Institutional Welfare and the Problem of the Residuum
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THE QUEST FOR INSTITUTIONAL WELFARE AND THE PROBLEM OF THE RESIDUUM The case of income maintenance and personal social care policies in Norway and Britain 1946 to 1966 Ivar Ledemel Thesis submitted for the degree of PhD Department of Social Science and Administration London School of Economics and Political Science University of London June 1989 ABSTRACT This study focusses on the relationship between social assistance and personal social services on the one hand and various forms of social insurance on the other hand. During the period the expressed objective was in both nations to replace the Poor Law with insurance, leaving only a small last resort assistance scheme. While Norway continued the pre-war practice of breaking down the Poor Law "from without" through the gradual extension of insurance, Britain attempted a more immediate transition through the creation of a universal National Insurance and a National Assistance freed from the cash-care multifunctional nature of the Poor Law. The comparison of the ensuing development rests on two postulates. First, Norwegian social insurance will be seen to have experienced a more favourable development in terms of coverage and levels of benefits. Second, in the case of assistance the Norwegian scheme covered a decreasing proportion of the population with a service bearing strong resemblance to those of the Poor Law. Britain, by contrast, experienced a growth in the number covered by assistance, in terms of numbers as well as need categories. The services obtained bear, however, less resemblance to the Poor Law compared to their Norwegian counterpart. For both nations it will be hypothesised that the scope and nature of assistance can be largely explained by the development of social insurance. The findings will be discussed in relation to Titmuss' models of welfare.The hypothesis is that while Norway on the whole has reached an income maintenance closer to the institutional model compared to Britian, a paradox emerges when we see that Norway also features a more residual assistance in comparison to services offered to equivalent groups in the UK. These findings are also discussed in relation to theories about the social division of welfare as well as different interpretations of determinants of welfare. The study is in two parts: Institutional and residual welfare. In the first we analyse first the emergence of the models of insurance in the two countries and, second, the 1946-1966 development of old age and disability pensions. The second part focusses on assistance and the changing nature of social work in the local authority personal social services. 4 CONTENTS Abstract 2 Introduction 9 Section 1: The Evolution of Institutional Welfare 22 Introduction Chapter 1: Towards the Norwegian Model of Social Insurance 28 1. Security in Old Age 28 1.1 Finance: From the contributory principle to a modified taxation solution 32 1.2 Coverage: Towards pragmatic selectivity and gradual universality 38 1.3 Levels of benefits 41 2. Alternative Schemes 42 2.1 Non-Public schemes 42 2.2 Public alternatives to State Pensions 43 3. Towards an Early Consensus 47 Summary and Conclusions 51 Chapter 2: Norwegian Social Insurance 1940 to 1967: From Pragmatic Selectivity Towards Institutional Universality 53 1. 1940 to 1957: Priority Conflicts and Compromises 55 2. 1957 to 1967 59 3. The 1966 National Insurance Act 61 4. Extensions to cover new groups 65 5. Other Schemes 71 Summary and Conclusions 74 5 Chapter 3: British Labour and Contributory Pensions:From Re iection to Acceptance and Implementation 77 Introduction 1. The Labour Party and Contributory OAP's before WW 2 79 1.1 1899 - 1908: Struggle for non-contributory pensions and Party Consolidation 80 1.2 1910 - 1930: Practical Acceptance and Rhetorical Dissociation 81 1.3 The 1930's: The Final move towards full acceptance 85 2. Discussions in the Labour movement 1940 to 1943 88 2.1 "The Labour Organiser" 90 2.2 Contemporary Literature 91 3. The Parliamentary Debate 16 - 19. February 1943 93 4. The 1943 Non-decision: Possible Explanations 96 4.1 The Fear of the Means Test 96 4.2 The Financing of the National Health Service 99 4.3 Policy Inheritance 100 Conclusion 101 Chapter 4: Residual Universality and Increasing Selectivity: Social Insurance in the UK 1946 - 1966 103 Introduction 1. The Beveridge Plan 104 2. Subsistence through Supplementation 109 3. Further Limitations to comprehensiveness 117 4. Renewed debate on the Contributory Flat Rate System 120 5. Conclusion of Secion 1 123 Section 2: Residual Welfare in the Expanding Welfare State 132 Introduction Norwegian Social Assistance 1946 - 1966 135 6 Chapter 5: From Social Assistance to Social Care: A Study of a Legislative Process 136 1. The 1953 Proposal 138 2. The 1963 Departmental Response 144 2.1 The Name of the Scheme 144 2.2 The Perception of the Clientele 145 2.3 Rights Versus Discretion 155 2.4 Money and Social Work: A Changing Relationship 159 2.5 The 1964 Social Care Act 162 3. The Politics of Social Policy 163 Conclusion 172 Chapter 6: Social Work in a Changing Social Service 175 1. Social Assistance: From Poor Relief to Social Care 175 1.1 Poor Law Services 175 1.2 Professionally Staffed SSD's: Departmental Policy in its' own 176 right or (unintended) bi-product of a Political compromise? 2. The 1964 Social Care Act: A Fillip to and Coursesetter for Norwegian 183 Social Work 2.1 Creating Work for Social Workers 184 2.2 Cash and Care in the SSD's 185 3. Social Work Education 188 Conclusion 197 COMPARATIVE EVIDENCE: A NORWEGIAN PERSPECTIVE ON BRITISH RESIDUAL SERVICES 198 Chapter 7: British Social Assistance 1948 - 1966 Introduction 1. The 1948 National Assistance Act 199 1.1 Britain and Norway: Similar Ends but Different Means 200 7 1.2 Towards a National Assistance Scheme 201 1.3 Reform Versus Abolition of the Poor Law 206 2. From National Assistance to Supplementary Benefits 208 2.1 Conservative Policy 210 2.2 Labour 211 3. The 1966 Social Security Act 216 Summary 218 Chapter 8: British Personal Social Services: From Specialisation to Unification 219 1. The Creation of Specialised Services to Replace the Welfare Element 219 of the Poor Law 2. The 1950's: Emphasis on the need for Coordination 224 3. Money and Social Work 226 4. Towards a unified Personal Social Service 230 5. Social Work Training: From Specialism to Genericism 234 Summary 238 6. Comparative Conclusion: The Contrasting Development of British and 239 Norwegian Residual Services Epilogue 249 List of References 256 Tables 1. Index of Residual and Institutional Schemes 18 4.1 Indices for NI benefits, NA allowances, Retail Prices and 111 Average Earnings 1948 - 1967 4.2 Numbers of National Assistance Grants in Supplementation of 112 Retirement Pensions 4.3 National Assistance Grants 1953 113 4.4 Assistance Allowances According to Category of Recipients 116 5.1 Heads of Families receiving Public Assistance 1946 - 1966 146 5.2 New Claimaints in Relation to Total Numbers 148 8 5.3 Numbers with Rights of Citizenship in a different Municipality 149 from where Help has been Provided, as Percentage of Numbers receiving aid in their own Community 5.4 Gross Decrease in Relation to Average Numbers of Claimants 150 Figures 2.1 Development of old-age Pension for Married Couples 60 2.2 The Development in the Number of Current Pensions under National 68 Insurance Schemes during the Period 1900 - 1966. 9 "I call this class the residuum, which there is in every constituency of almost hopeless poverty and dependency" Bright in Times. March 27.1867 INTRODUCTION The theme of this thesis is the relationship between the two mains forms of public income maintenance, social insurance and social assistance. The analysis will in the main be restricted to the first twenty years after the Second World War, the most formative period of the dynamic between the two sets of services as they exist today. Social assistance is the modern day version of the services of the Poor Law. Because the Poor Law combined the function of allocating money with the provision of personal social services, including the giving of advice, we shall include in the study an analysis of the organisation of these latter services in the period. Originally the aim was to analyse the Norwegian development on these lines. The reason for including a study of the development in the UK was, at the outset, to use the comparative approach in order to cast further light on the Norwegian development. As it turned out, equal weight has been given to both countries. But the "mirroring" approach has been maintained by allowing the Norwegian experience to determine the choice of questions to be inquired into in the British history. In the choice of Britain and Norway we hope to have struck a balance in the tight-rope walk of comparative studies: to have found two countries different enough to make a comparison interesting, while at the same time similar enough to make it feasible. The similarity lies, first of all, in poor laws established on similar lines in the first half of the 19th century, and second in an almost simultaneous launch of social insurance towards the end of that century. In the fifty years that 10 followed both countries continued the dismantling of their poor laws through the gradual extension of social insurance to cover groups for whom the inadequate benefits and degrading treatment of the Poor Law was no longer an acceptable alternative. In what follows we shall refer to this approach as the break up of the Poor Law "from without". The main dissimilarity lies in the divergence that occured with Britain's abolition of the Poor Law and separation of social services from the income maintenance element of social assistance in 1948.