Did thatcher roll back the state?

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  • To what extent did Thatcher "roll back" the state?
    • Civil Service
      • Thatcher had success in reducing the size of the Civil Service
        • In 1980 Britain had 3x as many bureaucrats as comparable nations with over 700,000 civil servants
      • MINIS- Management Information System for Ministers
        • Introduced by Michael Heseltine as Environment Minister and it allowed him to closely monitor the cost and responsibilities of the civil service--> designed to remove inefficiencies
          • This resulted in 1/4 of workers in the Environment Ministry were sacked in 3 years
            • In 1988 MINIS was rolled out across all government Ministries.
              • By 1988 22.5% of the civil service had been sacked
                • Thatcher had success in reducing the size of the Civil Service
                  • In 1980 Britain had 3x as many bureaucrats as comparable nations with over 700,000 civil servants
    • Local government
      • Local Govt. Act 1985
        • enabled Thatcher to abolish councils she found troublesome- 7 metropolitan councils were abolished with the Greater London council being the most notorious
        • She cut Central government funding of local councils from 60 to 40 percent of funding
      • Thatcher wanted councils to be "innovative" in order to become more efficient
        • Wandsworth council cut staff numbers by a third
        • Thatcher wanted local councils to contract out services such as rubbish collection to become more efficient
          • Nationally the number of local government employees fell from 2.5mil to 2.1mil during Thatcher's time in office
      • Thatcher tried to detach people from their "dependence" on local govt.
        • Housing Act 1980 (Right to buy)
          • Gave people the opportunity to buy their council house from the council if they lived there for three years
    • NHS
      • In Thatcher's first two terms she didn't see rolling back the NHS as a wise political position
        • People did not particularly care about Thatcher streamlining local government or the civil service however many people, especially the working class relied heavily on the NHS
      • When Thatcher got elected to her third term in office Thatcher tried to make the NHS more efficient with the increase of managers with no medical qualifications running departments in the NHS.
        • However this was very unpopular with clinical staff in the NHS and did not deliver as many savings as Thatcher had hoped for.
          • Between 1985 and 1991 money spent on managers in the NHS rose from just over £25 million to almost £400million
      • Although spending on the NHS did slow under Thatcher it is not accurate to say that it was rolled back under Thatcher
    • Education
      • Thatcher was sceptical of Local Education Authorities who controlled the spending and budgets of schools in their local area
        • In the 1988 Education Act allowed schools to be funded directly from central government meaning that head teachers and governors could control schools spending
          • This was an effectively a continuation of her local government roll back
      • However Thatcher did oversee an increase in government intervention in education with the 1988 Education Act enforcing a national curriculum

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