No dia 6 de junho, Bernard Harris (University of Strathclyde) será o orador convidado do Seminário de Estudos Pós-Graduados em História. A partir das 14h30, na Sala 1 do ICS-ULisboa e online.

In 1946, the Minister of Health for England and Wales, Aneurin Bevan, famously declared that it was ‘repugnant’ for hospitals to have to rely upon private charity, and introduced legislation to bring the vast majority of the country’s hospitals under state control.  However, despite these changes, hospitals continued to receive charitable donations and, in 1980, a Conservative government gave them the power to engage directly in their own fundraising activities.  The value of the sums raised from charitable activity continued to increase after that point, including a total of £162M during the Covid pandemic.

This paper focuses on the background to the 1980 legislation.  It begins by looking at the development of policy towards hospital fundraising during the 1940s and 1950s.  It then looks at some of the debates surrounding this issue during the 1960s and 1970s before considering the build-up to the 1980 Act itself.  It concludes by examining the practical impact of the new legislation during the following decade. The paper is part of a larger collaborative project, funded by the Wellcome Trust (219901/B/19/Z), which examines the ‘moving fronter’ between voluntary action and statutory provision in the UK’s National Health Services.

Bernard Harris is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Strathclyde (UK). He was Professor of the History of Social Policy at the University of Southampton before moving to Strathclyde in 2013.  His books include The health of the schoolchild: a history of the school medical service in England and Wales (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1995); The origins of the British welfare state: society, state and social welfare in England and Wales, 1800-1945 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2004) and (with Roderick Floud, Robert Fogel and Sok Chul Hong) The changing body: health, nutrition and human development in the western world since 1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).  Much of his current work revolves around issues associated with the history of morbidity, sanitary reform and the decline of mortality, and the history of various forms of voluntary action, including both mutual aid and charity.  His most recent paper, co-authored with Rosemary Cresswell, is ‘The legacy of voluntarism: Charitable funding in the early NHS’, Economic History Review, 77 (2), 554-83.