ABSTRACT
The study of welfare policy since the Second World War is not an entirely unmapped area, and it affords many examples of the 'dangerous fallibility'. The Social Security system was intended to replace the Poor Law, which formally and institutionally it did. The establishment of the National Assistance Board was evidendy not a contentious issue. It was seen as a simple and necessary measure to round off the social security programme. For the work of the National Assistance Board attracted little public or parliamentary attention. An examination of parliamentary questions concerned with National Assistance gives one a glimpse of the worries that were expressed, and of the preoccupations that lay behind them. It seems to have been generally accepted that National Assistance was essentially a service concerned with elderly people, a group who command widespread public and parliamentary sympathy. The relationship between public policy and public opinion is complicated and obscure.
