Welfare State In The United Kingdom Essay

, Research Paper

The Welfare State in the United Kingdom.

The United Kingdom is a Welfare State. In a Welfare State, the system of government enables the state to protect and promote the economic and social well-being of all its citizens. The basic objectives of a Welfare State is to foment the principles of equality of opportunity, non-discriminatory access to the wealth of the state and the state responsibility towards those members of the society who are unable to care for themselves or attain a minimum standard of living. In the United Kingdom, the basic idea of the British Welfare State has been articulated as the desire to care for all people resident in the United Kingdom “from the cradle to the grave”.

The main objectives have been traditionally defined as the eradication of “want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness”. Underlying these principles and objectives is the social consensus that it is preferable to live in a state in which all people in need are cared for by the state rather than in a community of people some of whom are poor, ill, hungry or destitute.

In order to meet these objectives, the members of the society collectively agree to contribute to a fund of money to assist the less advantaged members of the community. In this way, the responsibility for keeping all people in the society fed, clothed and healthy is the State’s. It is never the sole responsibility of any individual. In the perception of modern democracies, many of which are Welfare States, the model state is one in which there is no poverty and in which all people can achieve a comfortable standard of living irrespective of their health, social standing or their physical or intellectual abilities. The British Welfare State as now exists in the United Kingdom dates from 1945, that is, from the end of the Second World War (1939-1945).

The Welfare State was introduced by the Conservative government which, under the leadership of Winston Churchill, passed the Family Allowance Act. This Act, together with many others concerning social welfare, had first been proposed in the Beveridge Report which had been published three years previously, in 1942.Beveridge was born in Rangpur, India. He was the son of a British civil servant and was educated at Balliol College, Oxford. He became interested in unemployment in 1903 and in Unemployment: A Problem of Industry (1909), he argued that unemployment was caused by the way in which industry was organised. Beveridge was strongly influenced by the thinking of John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), the English economist. Keynesian economics argued that economic recessions can be overcome by governmental policies aimed at full employment.

Keynesian economics – if the working population was paid more, then it would have more money to buy more which would, in turn, generate greater demand on industry and thereby greater economic wealth with the result that more jobs would be provided to meet this demand.

This philosophy has been put into practice by many governments across the world. The drawback is that it causes inflation. When workers are paid more, they spend more. When workers spend more, product demand increases. When product demand increases, prices rise. When prices rise, workers ask for more money in order to consume more. In other words, the value of money depreciates. According to modern economic thinking, inflation must be reduced to zero.

In Full Employment in a Free Society (1944), Beveridge demonstrated the influence of Keynesian economics in his thinking. At this time, too, he was invited by the British government to design the British Welfare State. The resulting Beveridge Report outlined a comprehensive social security scheme, The Beveridge Report

A fundamental feature of the welfare state is social insurance, that is, insurance usually financed by compulsory contributions which is intended to provide benefits to persons and families in greatest need. The Beveridge Report presented the plan to form a system of state insurance in the United Kingdom whereby all working men and women paid a contribution into a national fund from which they received services and financial support whenever required as of right. The plan also provided for child allowances, family allowances and a national health service. Beveridge himself said in 1942:

“The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.” (quoted in S. Williams, Politics is for People, p. 17.)

It is in this altruistic spirit that Beveridge worked and with which the Beveridge Report was drawn up. However, there was an underlying, less altruistic, political reason for the creation of the welfare state in the United Kingdom. Following the Second World War, politicians saw the whole exercise of introducing the welfare state into the United Kingdom as a means of raising public morale following the war effort. It became politically expedient that the British people should be compensated for their sacrifice during the six years of war and should have a better quality of life to look forward to after the cessation of hostilities. Two major historians comment on this:

“There existed, so to speak, an implied contract between Government and the people; the people refused none of the sacrifices that the Government demanded from them for winning t