STATE PROVISION FOR SOCIAL NEED

The Beveridge Committee Report on the Welfare State
(Public Record Office Class PIN 8 and CAB 87/76-82)

Still highly relevant today, the Beveridge Report continues to receive international recognition. Beveridge recommended:

• A comprehensive scheme of social insurance including unemployment and sickness benefit, maternity benefit, widow’s benefit and pension, guardian’s allowance, retirement pension and other grants.
• A free National Health Service.
• A system of Children’s Allowances.
• An Industrial Injuries Scheme.
• Training schemes for the unemployed.

This microfilm collection brings together all the papers of Beveridge Committee and provides a comprehensive resource for the analysis of social and economic changes in the immediate post-war years. It features:

PIN 8: Social Insurance and Allied Services (Beveridge Report)

• The first part of this class (PIN 8/1-84) contains correspondence and papers of the central staff of the Cabinet Committee on Reconstruction under the Paymaster General. The staff were drawn from the departments of Health, Labour, Assistance Board and the Home Office. These documents provide a full insight into the consideration and planning of the administrative machinery to implement the Beveridge Report. They include material on weekly conferences, departmental committees, memoranda and other background details.
• The second part of the class (PIN 8/85-167) brings together all the papers of the Ministry of Health in connection with the Official Committee on the Beveridge Report, the central staff and implementation of the report. In particular, there are substantial sections reflecting both the direct responsibility of the department in the field of social insurance and allied services and departmental representation on the Beveridge Committee, the Phillips Committee and the Cental Staff.
• Another special section of paramount importance (PIN 8/115-116) provides the minutes, circulated papers, memoranda and annotated copies of the report of the Beveridge Committee from the working files of the Phillips Committee, December 1942 - January 1943, which looked into the report.

CAB 87/76-82: the Minutes, Memoranda and Committee Papers of the Beveridge Committee

• These are reproduced here in full to give a complete picture and enable researchers to study the evolution of the report, its findings, its problems, its advantages, its implementation and its impact.

In the process of compiling the report, Beveridge looked in detail at many early attempts to pass legislation to make provision for social need, from Bismarck and
Lloyd George, the work of Sidney and Beatrice Webb, the Fabian Society and trade union representatives, to the US Wisconsin Plan.

Above all the work of Beveridge is best remembered for the beginning of the
Social Services administration and the Welfare State in Britain, the formation of the National Health Service and the desire to tackle the difficult problems of unemployment.