He served on the Board of Trade as Director of the newly created labour exchanges, and later as Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Food.

[2] Beveridge's mother had, with Elizabeth Malleson, founded the Working Women's College in Queen Square, London in 1864.

William Beveridge was educated at Charterhouse, a leading public school near the market town of Godalming in Surrey, followed by Balliol College at the University of Oxford, where he studied Mathematics and Classics, obtaining a first class degree in both.

[3] While Beveridge's mother had been a member of the Stourbridge Unitarian community,[3] his father was an early humanist and positivist activist and "an ardent disciple" of the French philosopher Auguste Comte.

[6] In 1908, now considered to be Britain's leading authority on unemployment insurance, he was introduced by Beatrice Webb to Winston Churchill, who had recently been promoted to the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade.

He was so highly influenced by the Fabian Society socialists – in particular by Beatrice Webb, with whom he worked on the 1909 Poor Laws report – that he could be considered one of their number.

[2] Three years later, Ernest Bevin, Minister of Labour in the wartime National government, invited Beveridge to take charge of the Welfare department of his Ministry.

[9] His work on manpower culminated in his chairmanship of the Committee on Skilled Men in the Services which reported to the War Cabinet in August and October 1941.

[11] An opportunity for Bevin to ease Beveridge out presented itself in May 1941 when Minister of Health Ernest Brown announced the formation of a committee of officials to survey existing social insurance and allied services, and to make recommendations.

It recommended that the government should find ways of fighting the "five giants on the road of reconstruction" of Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness.

He appealed to conservatives and other sceptics by arguing that welfare institutions would increase the competitiveness of British industry in the post-war period, not only by shifting labour costs like healthcare and pensions out of corporate ledgers and onto the public account but also by producing healthier, wealthier and thus more motivated and productive workers who would also serve as a great source of demand for British goods.

Beveridge saw full employment (defined as unemployment of no more than 3%) as the pivot of the social welfare programme he expressed in the 1942 report.

[17][18] As a result, for the first time in human history, a World Constituent Assembly convened to draft and adopt a Constitution for the Federation of Earth.

[19] Later in 1944, Beveridge, who had recently joined the Liberal Party, was elected to the Commons in a by-election for the Berwick-upon-Tweed seat to succeed George Charles Grey, who had died on the battlefield in Normandy, France, on the first day of Operation Bluecoat on 30 July 1944.

The new system was partly built upon the National Insurance scheme set up by then-Chancellor of the Exchequer and future Liberal Prime Minister David Lloyd George in 1911.

[22][23][24] In 1909, he proposed that men who could not work should be supported by the state "but with complete and permanent loss of all citizen rights – including not only the franchise but civil freedom and fatherhood.

"[25] Whilst director of the London School of Economics, Beveridge attempted to create a Department of Social Biology.

Former LSE director John Ashworth speculated that discord between those in favour and those against the serious study of eugenics led to Beveridge's departure from the school in 1937.

[33][34] In November 2018, English Heritage unveiled a blue plaque commemorating Beveridge at 27 Bedford Gardens in Campden Hill, London W8 7EF where he lived from 1914 until 1921.