 Poor law unions were abolished by the Local Government Act 1929, which transferred responsibility for public assistance to county and county borough councils.The English Poor Laws laid out the system of poor relief that existed in England and Wales from the reign of Elizabeth I until the emergence of the modern welfare state after the Second World War.Historian Mark Blaug has argued that the Poor Law system provided "a welfare state in miniature, relieving the elderly, widows, children, the sick, the disabled, and the unemployed and underemployed".