Liberal Government

In the 1906 election, the Liberal government came into power, winning a landslide victory, however, at the same time, they also faced stiff competition from the Labour party for the votes of the working classes, who won 29 seats, up from two in the last, and labours first election. In an attempt to secure their position as the working classes party, as well as due to several other factors such as new liberalism and the reports of Booth and Rowntree, the liberal government passed a series of reforms which, to a greater or lesser extent, aimed at trying to ease the problems of poverty in Britain. The First set of these acts were aimed at helping the young, namely the School meals act 1906, the 1907 medical inspections act and the 1908 children's charter. Following the children's acts, the 1908 pensions act was introduced to ease the problems facing the old, the labour exchanges of 1909 and the 1911 national insurance act were the main acts applied to giving assistance to the adults of working age, with emphasis on trying to ease the problems caused by unemployment and sickness.

The School meals act 1906 was the first reform past by the Liberal government following their coming into power. The act was made with the intention of providing a good meal to all British students during their school career, partially in response to the committee on physical deterioration 1905 who said that "it is the height of cruelty to subject half staved children to the process of education", an attitude which had been growing since the late nineteenth century. The act allowed all local councils to use taxes to provide free school meals to students, however, there were sever limitations with this act. For one thing, the act only allowed local councils to do this, not forcing them to, and from the statistics we can see that by 1914 less then 1/3 of all councils were taking part in this, making it's overall effect towards easing poverty considerably less then it could have been if better executed. However, those who did benefit form this benefited considerably as many of them would previously not have had any full meals, meaning that it overall had some affect on easing the problems of poverty in Britain, though only to a few rather then the amount it had been aiming to help.

The second act passed by the Liberal government was the medical inspections act in 1907, designed to give all children at least three medical inspection's during their school career. This act did manage to achieve what it set out to do, that being the medical inspection's, however, there were several flaws with this act, the largest one being the the act supplied inspection's only, not treatment to help the illnesses the children were often found to have, greatly weakening the amount this act could ease poverty until 1912, when free treatment was provided, although this was only to children starting in 1912 or later, meaning it still failed to help many people. The act was also limited exclusively to children, meaning that it could not help adults and older children, who were, more often then not, in as bad, if not worse, a condition, medically speaking, as the young children getting the inspection's, again, limiting the effect this had on easing the problems of poverty in Britain.

The Children's charter was the largest piece of legislation made by the Liberal government to deal with problems facing children. The charter was really just a combination of acts brought together as a single piece of legislation, making it important to judge each part on merits, rather then as a single, large act. The separation of children's courts and prisons from adult one's was probably the most successful of the parts of the charter, for one thing, unlike other parts, this one was easy to enforce, the separation of courts led to children's case's being judged independently of adult ones, whilst the separation of prisons helped to stop child prisoners from learning to be better criminals from adult ones. However, this did little to help ease the problems with poverty, as children were still, under law, to be treated like adults when being sentenced, although many judges were kinder to child criminals in juvenile courts, there were many who were as harsh as they harshly as before. The charter also tried to protect children form the "Social Evils", those being alcohol, tobacco, and begging, by setting a minimum age limit of 16, however, this was hard to enforce, particularly as complying with this would have greatly diminished the revenues of many shopkeeper, making this section of the charter, again, fairly ineffective at easing the problems of poverty in Britain. The charter also made it compulsory for all high schools to hold at least ¼ of all places to be provided for free to students attending elementary schools, it was this section of the charter which was most likely to have helped in easing the problems of poverty, however, the parents of many of the children who got into these places instead encouraged them to go into work, rather then then spend more time in schooling, making this ineffective at helping children from poor backgrounds gain an education and get out of poverty, making it's contribution towards easing the problems of poverty in Britain very little. Overall the charter did little to ease the problems of poverty in Britain, though this was not what it had aimed at achieving, it was instead intent at trying to protect children from falling pray to the same problems that many poor people had, however, this did not help ease the problems of poverty, making it overall ineffective.

The 1908 Pensions act was one of the more helpful at easing the problems of poverty in Britain, if only for the old. The act's main aim was to prevent the elderly "who [had] toiled all their days to end in poverty and possibly starvation" (Lloyd George) becoming a burden on their children, providing a pension of up to 5 shillings a week, depending on other means, to anyone over 70 who had not been in prison over the last 10 years, had lived in Britain for the last 20 years, and had not avoided work up to becoming a pensioner. However, the 5 shillings provided was not enough to meat the poverty line as established by Rowntree of 7 shillings, though, as stated above, it was expected they would be living with their children at this point, meaning that the pension was more to stop them being a burden then to allow them to survive on their own, meaning it did ease the problems

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