... made. Asa Briggs defines a Welfare State as "a state in which organised power is deliberately used (through politics and administration) in an effort to modify the play of market forces", suggesting that perhaps the process of the evolving of legislation from the Liberal reforms (1906-11) was key - although the ideas behind the evolution of these policies needed to change to make the legislation a deliberate or cohesive step towards this. For a Welfare State to exist there must have been an overall design that was lacking until after the Second World War. This is best summarised by Derek Fraser when he says "the Englishman of 1939 was very much better protected than his father...Pensions, health insurance, unemployment relief, housing subsidies, a more humane Poor Law, an embryonic municipal hospital service; all theses and more were available to a large number of citizens"5. So what was missing from ...

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