Beveridge Report

[2] It was drafted by the Liberal economist William Beveridge – with research and publicity by his future wife, mathematician Janet Philip[3] – who proposed widespread reforms to the system of social welfare to address what he identified as "five giants on the road of reconstruction":[citation needed] "Want… Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness".

On 10 June 1941 Arthur Greenwood, the Labour MP and Minister without Portfolio, announced the creation of an inter-departmental committee which would carry out a survey of Britain's social insurance and allied services: To undertake, with special reference to the inter-relation of the schemes, a survey of the existing national schemes of social insurance and allied services, including workmen's compensation, and to make recommendations.

[5] The Ministry of Information Home Intelligence found that the Report had been "welcomed with almost universal approval by people of all shades of opinion and by all sections of the community"[citation needed] and seen as "the first real attempt to put into practice the talk about a new world".

[6] The Times called the Report "a momentous document which should and must exercise a profound and immediate influence on the direction of social change in Britain",[citation needed] while The Manchester Guardian described it as "a big and fine thing".

[citation needed] The Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, said it was "the first time anyone had set out to embody the whole spirit of the Christian ethic in an Act of Parliament".

[7] A Ministry of Information Home Intelligence report found that after the debate the left-wing section of the public were disappointed but that "an approving minority" thought that the government was correct to wait until the post-war financial situation was known before making a decision.

These measures were "national compulsory insurance for all classes for all purposes from the cradle to the grave";[citation needed] the abolition of unemployment by government policies which would "exercise a balancing influence upon development which can be turned on or off as circumstances require"; "a broadening field for State ownership and enterprise"; new housing; major reforms to education; and largely expanded health and welfare services.

[9] Churchill's commitment to creating a welfare state was limited: he and the Conservative Party opposed much of the implementation of the Beveridge Report, including voting against the founding of the NHS.

Infant, child, and maternity services were expanded, while the Official Food Policy Committee (chaired by the deputy PM and Labour leader Clement Attlee) approved grants of fuel and subsidised milk to mothers and to children under the age of five in June 1940.

"[15] An Emergency Hospital Service was introduced, which provided free treatment to casualties (a definition which included war evacuees), while rationing led to significant improvements in the diets of poor families.

As noted by Richard Titmuss,[16] The families in that third of the population of Britain who, in 1938, were chronically undernourished, had their first adequate diet in 1940 and 1941…[after which] the incidence of deficiency diseases, and notably infant mortality, dropped dramatically.The Labour Party eventually also adopted the Beveridge proposals, and after their victory in the 1945 general election, they proceeded to implement many social policies, which became known as the Welfare State.