The “Beveridge Report”
The “Beveridge Report” In 1940, Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labor, you are asked a series of recommendations on social security, which until then had been developed without coherence or rigor required. For the same reason, the government chooses the following year to William Beveridge to prepare a report as to propose a reconstruction model for the postwar period. The report, entitled Report to the Parliament on Social Insurance and Allied Services, or “Report to Parliament on social security and benefits that flow from it,” became public in November 1942. This report recommends that every citizen of working age should pay a weekly series of social charges, with the objective to establish a range of benefits for sickness, unemployment, retirement and others. Beveridge believes that this system will ensure a minimum standard of living below which nobody should fall.To convince skeptical conservatives, Beveridge explained that the assumption by the state of medical expenses and pensions to the domestic industry will benefit from increased productivity, and consequently competitiveness. In 1944, he published a second work that is sometimes known by the name of “Second Beveridge” (Full Employment in a Free Society, “Work for all in a free society”) which states that the implementation of a effective social protection system requires a situation of full employment. At this point his progressive ideas converge with those of another British economist, John Maynard Keynes. After the war, Clement Attlee’s Labor Party wins the election the outgoing prime minister, Conservative Winston Churchill. The new Prime Minister then announced the launching of the welfare state, as had been defined in the first Beveridge report of 1942. In 1944, Beveridge was elected to the House of Commons representing the Liberal Party.In 1946, he became Baron Tugall, and will lead the Liberal group in the House of Lords. He died on 16 March 1963.
