The New Poor Law was the first concerted centralised attempt to correct the developing causes of poverty and unemployment. It produced many significant changes that resulted, in both positive and negative effects. I believe that the Poor Law Amendment act did a lot to solve certain aspects of the causes and effects of poverty in Britain, I do think that it also contained weaknesses that meant its usefulness was limited when dealing with other parts of the poverty problem. The Poor Law Amendment act did go some way to solving the, as Source 2 says, one of the...
people saw this as southern interference.

Overall I do agree that the Royal Commission's Report and the Poor Law Amendment Act that followed it, 'contained weaknesses that severely limited their usefulness in dealing with poverty. It clearly failed to reduce the overall level of poverty and adversely affected some of the poorer sections of society. In particular it had a disproportionate effect upon the North as industrialisation continued to develop. I believe that the largest and most significant weakness shown by the Act was the Commission's inability to identify the problems caused by cyclical and frictional unemployment