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Resignation at the Treasury: the Social Services Committee and the Failure to Reform the Welfare State, 1955–57*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Rodney Lowe
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Abstract

Between 1955–7 welfare expenditure in Britain came under serious attack. The main protagonist was the Treasury and its chosen implement a five-year review of the social services, to be presided over by a ministerial Social Services Committee. The attack rebounded, for the Committee provided the opportunity for the consolidation of the defence of welfare expenditure and for a frontal attack on Treasury assumptions. This neglected episode in Conservative government social policy places in historical context the early defeat of monetarism (with Thorneycroft's resignation in 1958) and provides the background to the establishment of the Plowden Committee and of the Public Expenditure Survey Committee. It also raises questions about the degree of post-war consensus and the failure to make the constructive development of the welfare state an objective of ‘conviction’ politics.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , October 1989 , pp. 505 - 526
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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