A NATION KNIT
GENERAL expectation regarding Sir William Beveridge's report on the Social Services is about to be satisfied. It is not surprising that the report should have been awaited with impatience, concern and hope in different quarters, for it was obvious from the authorship of the document, and the terms of reference which determine its scope, that some hopes would be justified, some dis- appointed and some vested interests thrown violently on the defensive. The procedure adopted by Mr. Arthur Greenwood, when the member of the War Cabinet charged particularly with planning for domestic reconstruction, was sound. A committee on the subject might have been appointed. Instead of that the commission was given to a single individual with a distinguished record as economist, civil servant and (as head of the London School of Economics) administrator, to undertake a survey of the existing national schemes of social insurance and allied services, including w'orkmen's compensation, and to make recommendations. The advantage of that course was that it promised, not a report consist- ing by the nature of things of a compromise between differing views, and perhaps with actual minutes of dissent, but a comprehensive• and coherent plan worked out by a single competent brain Ater prolonged discussion with a committee composed mainly of civil servants experienced in all the fields of administration under review, but none of them responsible individually for the conclusions reached.
The method would be open to objection only if it provided any pretext in high quarters for side-tracking the report on the grourid that, admirable and interesting though its findings were, they represented after all- only one man's views. Obviously nothing in the Beveridge Report is sacrosanct. It deals with controversial questions and must call for expenditure on a scale that may well agitate timid minds. But if the Beveridge scheme is not accepted, that must only be because it has been taken as starting- point for something better. The fact that controversy is provoked about the shape reform should take is the worst of reasons for leaving reform alone or only tinkering with it. If President Roosevelt's "freedom from want" is accepted as among the chief of our peace aims for the world, the first country in which it must be realised is our own. And freedom from want must mean pre- cisely what the words imply. There is, no doubt, a need for definition. - " Want " is to some extent a matter of degree. But the research work of authorities like Mr. Seebohm Rowntree and Sir John Orr has made it possible to determine the minimum figure on which a family of a given size can, in Mr. Rowntree's words, "secure the necessaries of a healthy life." The figure fixed by the same authority for York, the city in which his intensive investigation was conducted, was 43s. 6d. a week exclusive of rent, or 53s. inclusive, for a man and wife and three dependent children. That was for the year 1936; it would be easy to calculate what change should be made in the light of the rise of prices since that date. Whatever figure is fixed it is essential that the foundation principle—that every family in this country be put in a position to secure the " necessaries of a healthy life "—be accepted. To achieve that must after the war be a first charge on the incomes of those who enjoy a comfortable, and ,in some cases a very substantial, margin over such necessaries.
There must be no illusion about what acceptance of the principle involves. It affects primarily wages, unemploymeht and sickness allowances and pensions, and between wages and the various allowances there must be co-ordination, for it cannot be admitted that a man should be drawing more when out of work than when employed. Comparatively few wage-earners in war- time remain below the Rowntree level, and means must be found, possibly by an extension of the trade-board system, to see that they do not fall below it afterwards. That certain payments will have to be increased is obvious, but a rearrangement of machinery will involve some rearrangement of charges. The principle of family allowances, for example, may be regarded by this time as generally accepted, though the amount, and whether it should be paid in respect of every child, is not. Whatever the Government decides regarditig that, it is clear that in so far as dependent children are provided for in this category the need for allowances for such children under unemployment and pension schemes disappears. It is no more than a matter of book-keeping, but a reminder that family allowances are only in part a new commit- ment is not inopportune. There is little hope that they will be on such a scale as completely to remove the financial burden of -parenthood, and it remains to be proved whether they will in fact have any direct effect on the size of families, but the public con- science will be considerably easier, and should be, when the financial obstacles to larger families are in large part removed.
Numerous as are the shortcomings of our social services, as study of the Beveridge Report will undoubtedly reveal, we are entitled to view with considerable satisfaction the immense pro- gress registered in little over a generation. Old Age Pensions date from 1908, Health Insurance from 1911, Unemployment Insurance (in a limited number of trades) from 1912, school meals from 1906. With maternity benefit and pre-natal treatment to affect the welfare of a child even before its birth, free meals if necessary while at school, entry into health and unemployment schemes almost immediately after, and old-age pensions to banish anxieties towards the close of life, the whole of human existence from birth to death comes under the protective provision of the State. But that does not mean that the provision is in all cases adequate ; for old-age pensioners in particular it conspicuously is not. Nor is the machinery such as to make for satisfaction, smoothness or economy. The different existing schemes have been constructed independently, and contributions must be paid separately in respect of unemployment, health and other benefits, while the system under which approved societies were made administrators of health in- surance results in a considerable disparity in the forms of treat- ment available to different insured mdividuals.
All this points urgently to the need for consolidation. The whole of the existing system, indeed, may properly be regarded as so far experimental. The time has now come to profit by the experience of the past and determine that ascertained needs shall be met on an adequate scale and in the simplest form. That clearly involves extension in several directions. Not only financial benefits but various services must be increased. In the field of health the ideal should be that whatever treatment a sufferer needs shall be available. That means, among other things, that under the health insurance scheme hospital treatment shall be a right, not a privilege limited by the time required to work up to the top of a lengthy waiting-list. The panel-doctor scheme raises many questions. It gives only limited satisfaction, and a strong prejudice in favour of resort to a private doctor prevails even among those who are entitled to consultation and medicine, free as contributors to the national health insurance scheme. If the income-level below which health and unemployment contri- butions are paid is raised substantially, as there is little doubt that it will be whatever Government is in power, the case for a State medical service is greatly strengthened. It need not be completely comprehensive. Some private practitioners would still exist for patients who preferred that and could afford to pay for them. Opinion in medical circles on the desirability of such a step is divided, but there would certainly be no such opposition as there was to the original health insurance scheme when Mr. Lloyd George introduced it. The only criterion here is what would ultimately be best for the national health.
In all this there is one thing that matters supremely. In what spirit is the nation to face its responsibilities to those of its citizens who stand in special need? There is little to be said for any doctrinaire egalitarianism, but from some degree of communal sympathy and its practical consequences we cannot refrain without national discredit. For those who, whatever view they take of - Christian dogma, believe generally in the Christian way of life, the reminder that we are members one of another, and that the strong ought to bear the infirmities of those that are weak, will hardly be needed. For those—and the category must sii`rely be comprehensive—who recognise the duty "to care for him who shall have borne the battle and his widow and his Orphan," understanding by that the battle of life as well as the battle of arms, there will be no hesitation about the end desired, though there may well be about the detailed means. For many it Will mean sacrifice. Their superfluity will be curtailed that the lack of others may be supplied. The good citizen will accept that gladly. On a minority which does not it must be imposed.
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