Social Security Systems- Britain Lord William Henry Beveridge
William Beveridge
William Henry Beveridge, 1st Baron Beveridge of Tuggal (March 5, 1879 – 16 March 1963) was a British economist and social reformer.
In 1942 he produced a Report titled “Social Insurance and Allied Services” (a.k.a.the Beveridge Report). That Report was the foundation and origin of the UK’s Post World War II government’s Welfare State and National Health Service programmes.
William Beveridge was the eldest son of a judge in the Indian Civil Service. He was born in Bengal. Having studied at Charternhouse School and Balliol College, Oxford University, he became a lawyer. He was very interested in social services and he wrote loads of articles for the Morning Post newspaper.
In 1908 he joined the Board of Trade (Department of Trade and Industry). He assisted in setting up “Labour Exchanges” ( Job Centres) in different parts of the country. In 1909, he was appointed the Director of Labour Exchanges.
Beveridge was the brain behind David Lloyd George’s 1911 National Insurance Act, because between 1908 and 1914 he was asked to advise the government on “Old Age Pensions and National Insurance”. He did a brilliant job. It was at this point that the government began to take action to combat poverty in the UK.
During the Great War, Beveridge helped in mobilising and controlling manpower. He was knighted after the War. He was made the Permanent Secretary
By 1919 he left the civil service to join the London School of Economics and Political Science as its Director.
Lord Beveridge was a human being with a human heart. In his Report of 1942, he recommended that the government should find ways of fighting “the five Giant Evils of the world”; namely, Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. This led to the setting up of the modern Welfare State.
