A Social Security Plan for Great Britain: The Government's White Paper

IN JUNE 1941, the British Government asked Sir William Beveridge to recommend changes in the existing programs for social insurance and allied services. His report, presented in November 1942, 1 outlined a social security plan for "all citizens without upper income limit—all embracing in scope of persons and needs," based on assumptions that the Government would take other measures to prevent mass unemployment, would establish comprehensive health services, and would provide children's allowances. Early this year, the Government issued White Papers on proposed measures to combat unemployment and provide Nationwide health services. 2 The White Paper outlining proposals for family allowances, social insurance , national assistance, and work-men's compensation was presented in September. 3 With this White Paper, the British Government rounds out its comprehensive social and economic policy. The first duty of Government, the White Paper points out, is to protect the country from external aggression; the second, to secure the general prosperity and happiness of its people. The Government must first foster growth of capacity to produce and earn, with accompanying increase in well-being, leisure, and recreation, and, second, must plan to prevent individual poverty resulting from hazards of personal fortune over which individuals have little or no control, Neither course alone is effective. A nation cannot avoid widespread poverty if earning power is impaired by unemployment or inefficiency, and, regardless of high production levels, a nation has not solved its problems if it includes any appreciable groups who are in want because their earning power is reduced by ill-health, unemployment , old age, or inability to provide properly for their children. When the present proposals, modified by public opinion and Parliamentary debate, are given the force of law, and the necessary "mosaic of details" has been worked out by the administrative agencies concerned, "provision will have been made against every one of the main attacks which economic ill-fortune can launch against individual well-being and peace of mind. Social insurance is but a means to achieving positive effort and abundant living. Yet it is a necessary means." The Government pays tribute to Sir William Beveridge for his "com-prehensive and imaginative report" by embodying much of his plan in its proposals. On details of contribution and benefit, it sometimes proposes more, sometimes less; basically, however , the Government plan, like the Beveridge report, provides a unified program of social security for the entire population, using the contributory principle as …