Beveridge report and the 5 Giants PDF

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Small summary essay on the beveridge report and whether it is still relevant to todays society....

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In 1941 William Beveridge was asked to report on the problems of society Britain faced after the world war. “He published his report in 1942 and recommended that the government should find ways of fighting the five 'Giant Evils' of 'Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, and Idleness'.” (Bbc.co.uk, 2017) This essay will only be discussing 3 and the persistence these have in the uk today. These 3 are want, squalor and idleness. What Beveridge means by want, by some, can be misunderstood. What he means is “when a person’s resources are not sufficient to meet their minimum needs”. (Armstrong, 2017) This is to say that people were living in poverty on various levels of seriousness. From the report, after a change from conservative to labour, the government saw that action needed to be taken and in 1946 introduced a new policy called the national insurance act which created the basis of what we now call the welfare state, the policy also lead to the introduction of the state health service. “The Act provided for compulsory contributions for unemployment, sickness, maternity and widows' benefits and old age pensions from employers and employees, with the government funding the balance.” (Spartacus Educational, 2017) it is what formed benefits, sickness pay, maternity leave and pension schemes. This aimed to get those in poverty, out and to also allow those in work to not go into poverty due to loss of pay. In 1948 another policy was introduced called the national assistance act and is designed to help simplify and rectify anything missing from the national insurance act. It’s ”An Act to terminate the existing poor law and to provide in lieu thereof for the assistance of persons in need by the National Assistance Board and by local authorities; to make further provision for the welfare of disabled, sick, aged and other persons and for regulating homes for disabled and aged persons and charities for disabled persons; to amend the law relating to noncontributory old age pensions; to make provision as to the burial or cremation of deceased 1

persons; and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid.” (Legislation.gov.uk, 2017) These were set up to try and eradicate poverty, but has it worked? Figure 1: Poverty and persistent poverty rates, 2008 to 2015, UK and EU average

(Ons.gov.uk, 2017) Looking at figure 1 we can see that over recent years overall poverty has fallen whilst persistent poverty has fluctuated and most recently started to rise. “7.3% of the UK population were experiencing persistent poverty, equivalent to roughly 4.6 million people. Persistent poverty is defined as experiencing relative low income in the current year, as well as at least 2 out of the 3 preceding years.” (Ons.gov.uk, 2017) Building on this in 2015 persistent poverty effected roughly 5 million people. The UK policies in recent years have made a change as overall poverty has fallen to below that of overall poverty in the EU as of 2011. In comparison to 1950 when “the Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimated that in 1950 only 2.8% of the population were below the poverty line, whereas without the new welfare benefits 22.2% of the population would have been below the poverty line.” (Bbc.co.uk, 2017) This shows that there has been a drop in poverty since Beveridge’s report although it

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has not completely rid the UK of it, it has brought it down from roughly 22% of the Uk being in poverty down to roughly 16% of overall poverty. One of the reasons behind the poverty number is another of Beveridge’s giants, this giant is idleness. Idleness is “the quality, state, or condition of being lazy” (Dictionary.com, 2017) When Beveridge’s report was released the reason behind idleness was clear. Figure 2: UK unemployment

(Economicshelp.org, 2017) Figure 2 shows a very high percentage of unemployment pre-war time. When Beveridge investigated he found the work force showed a serious lack of skills and the desire to work was low, many did not want to work for what they were getting in return therefore, some, chose not working at all as the easier and better option for themselves. In 1929 until 1932 the great depression occurred in America, which caused the high peak in the graph, and influenced the British after “The value of British exports halved, plunging its industrial areas into poverty: by the end of 1930, unemployment more than doubled to 20 per cent.” (Bl.uk,

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2017) Afterwards, before world war 2 started, the British people saw no motivation into getting back into work so, until they were called upon in 1939 for war, unemployment stayed high at roughly 15%. After the war we saw the golden age of unemployment which occurred in the 1950s and 1960s. “This was helped by the global post-war economic boom and also the commitment to full employment which was an important feature of the post-war consensus.” (Economicshelp.org, 2017) In the 1980s there was another rise in the % of unemployment. This came due to the government which was being run by Margaret Thatcher. Towards the end of her rein “An economic boom later in the decade helped to bring unemployment down, but it was a slow process.” (BBC News, 2017) In todays era we still see idleness and unemployment as a problem. Its persistency of late is shown in figure 3. Figure 3: Unemployment rate (aged 16 and over)

(Ons.gov.uk, 2017) Compared to what we saw in figure 2, figure 3 shows us that in the last 10 years, the unemployment has persistently remained lower than 10% but just over 5% until recent

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years. In terms of overall persistency, there has been much fluctuation with unemployment and idleness alongside it, but it has been a problem more than it hasn’t been and for that reason its persistency is still here today. This is shown by the fact that in the UK today unemployment stands at 4.3% which is roughly 1.5 million people. This is caused by the lack of jobs that are available to people today in Britain and how poorly the available jobs pay, also families and individuals would rather be living off of benefits instead of a poorly paid job just because it means they can have a more relaxed lifestyle, which shows how idleness still exists in Britain today. The third and final Giant that this essay will discuss is squalor. Squalor or the act of living or being squalid is defined as being “extremely dirty and unpleasant, often because of lack of money” (Dictionary, 2017) This links with poverty in the way that most people in poverty will be living in some degree of squalor. At the time of Beveridge’s report families were getting larger due to the post war baby boom, this meant more people were living in small houses as there was a shortage of good housing to meet the demand at the time. After the war finished policy was introduced that ensured houses were being built to try and meet the demand. This saw mass council house building between 1945-1970. This was to help the poorer families that were living in such bad conditions that it was affecting their health and then helped those who were living in crowded housing. Ipsos Mori conducted research into the UK housing conditions in 2016 and found that “more than one in four of the nearly 2,000 surveyed said their homes failed basic standards of affordability. In these cases, people had to cut back on essentials like food and heating just to pay their rent or mortgage.” (Withnall, 2017) Alongside squalor comes homelessness, “The latest figures showed that 4,134 people slept rough across England on any given night in 2016 - a 16% increase compared to the previous year” (Crisis, 2017) also “Last year 59,090 households were accepted as homeless 5

in England.” (Crisis, 2017) This shows that squalor is still persistent within society, however it is in a different form, before It was the actual housing conditions and now its moved to a much greater scale of a problem including some people having to live on the streets due to lack of housing and the inability to afford a house. To summarise it is obvious to see that although changes have been made or tried to be implemented we still have problems with Beveridge’s 3 giants of want, idleness and squalor. This shows that they have been persistent and there is strong arguments to back that up. The fact that they have a flow between them, in terms of a link in reasoning, shows that they could be eradicated if one of them was to be dealt with but they are all so severe that if the government were to try and eradicate just one, the others would cause bigger problems so there is no option other than to let them all come down slowly together if it is possible.

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Bibliography Armstrong, S. (2017). Want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness: are Beveridge’s five evils back?. [online] the Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/oct/10/beveridge-five-evils-welfare-state BBC News. (2017). The Thatcher years in statistics. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-22070491 Bbc.co.uk. (2017). BBC - History - William Beveridge. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/beveridge_william.shtml Bbc.co.uk. (2017). BBC - Intermediate 2 Bitesize History - The Labour Government 1945 -51 The Welfare State : Revision, Page 7. [online] Available at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/intermediate2/history/cradle_to_the_grave/welfare_state/r evision/7/ Bl.uk. (2017). The Great Depression. [online] Available at: http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item107595.html Crisis. (2017). About homelessness | Crisis | Together we will end homelessness. [online] Available at: https://www.crisis.org.uk/ending-homelessness/about-homelessness/ Dictionary, s. (2017). squalid Meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary. [online] Dictionary.cambridge.org. Available at: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/squalid Dictionary.com. (2017). the definition of idleness. [online] Available at: http://www.dictionary.com/browse/idleness Economicshelp.org. (2017). Historical Unemployment Rates. [online] Available at: https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/780/unemployment/unemployment-rates-history/ Legislation.gov.uk. (2017). National Assistance Act 1948. [online] Available at: http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo6/11-12/29 Ons.gov.uk. (2017). Persistent poverty in the UK and EU - Office for National Statistics. [online] Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/i ncomeandwealth/articles/persistentpovertyintheukandeu/2015 Ons.gov.uk. (2017). Unemployment rate (aged 16 and over, seasonally adjusted) - Office for National Statistics. [online] Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/unemployment/ti meseries/mgsx/lms Spartacus Educational. (2017). 1946 National Insurance Act. [online] Available at: http://spartacus-educational.com/Linsurance1946.htm

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Withnall, A. (2017). Shocking figures show four in 10 Britons living in substandard homes. [online] The Independent. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/homenews/shelter-living-home-standard-squalid-uk-figures-show-four-in-10-britons-living-insubstandard-a7364671.html

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