THE BEVERIDGE BATTLE
IT is deplorable that the relationship between the Government and the large body of Members of the House of Commons of all parties who welcome and support the Beveridge scheme should have fr, be expressed in terms of conflict, but that is the situation created after the first two days' debate—which is all we are in a position to deal with here. It may be that before these lines are read Mr. Herbert Morrison will have been able to put the Govern- ment's policy in a different light, but since it has obviously been fully considered, and reconsidered during the debate itself, not much optimism on that point can be entertained. When Sir John Anderson had read his carefully prepared statement on the first day of the debate it was still possible to assume, in the euphemistic language of Sir Ian Fraser, that the Government's case was better than its speakers had mAlle it out to be, but that conclusion could not survive the plausible evasions with which the Chancellor of the Exchequer persistently irritated the House on the second day. It would have been perfectly simple for the Government to have given the Beveridge Report an unstinted welcome, hailing it, and the re- ception it has met with in the country, as evidence of an unswerving resolve that what Mr. Quintin Hogg called the community spirit shall not perish with the peace, that common burdens shall be borne in common and that the men returning from the war shall come back to a life in which they 'will be secured at least from the spectre of actual want for themselves and their wives and children. All that could and should have been expressed in terms of resolute aspiration, always with the proviso that in such a matter desire might easily outrun resources and that for a time at any rate performance mighPlhave to be limited by the financial situation.
Something like that, it seems possible, is what Sir John Anderson and Sir Kingsley Wood did intend to say. The calamity is that the emphasis was everywhere laid wrong. The Lord President was laborious and uninspiring, and created the impres- sion that the Government was patently solicitous for vested interests like the insurance companies, both those interposed as a cushion between employer and employed in the matter of employers' liability and the others which so wastefully and unsocially carry on the industrial insurance business, while Sir Kingsley Wood appeared to be concentrating his not inconsider- able talents on the mobilisation of objections. No one is suggest- ing, or ever has suggested, that the financial element in the Beveridge scheme can be neglected. It is obviously paramount. The proposed figure of 5s. for children's allowances, as against Sir William Beveridge's proposal of 8s., would be accepted, with some regret, but without serious criticism, and the fact of the Government's refusal to accept the steadily-mounting scale of old age pensions formulated in the Beveridge Report would be regarded as at any rate a reasonable subject for discussion. But when the first Government spokesman's speech is a monologue on the theme of " no commitments " and the second consists of a warning that after all the principles have been accepted and the necessary legislation drafted financial reconsideration may hold everything up, the only possible conclusion is that the Govern- ment's enthusiasm for social security on courageous lines is of a very different order from the House's or the country's. A diffi- cult and disturbing political situation has been created, and the Government has only itself to thank.
That having been said, let the most be made of what the Govern- ment has in fact conceded—for though concession should not be the term to apply to the Cabinet's response to universal -expecta- don, it is the one which most accurately describes the Govern- ment speakers' attitude.- The Beveridge plan is said to be accepted in principle; though that acceptance is considerably vitiated by the refusal to appoint a Minister of Social Security, whose task it, would be to begin immediately the survey of the vast field of reform and consolidation, and create the necessary machinery for the administration of a unified plan. That would have been a real guarantee and evidence of the Government's good intentions, and it is of bad omen that the guarantee is withheld. The principle of children's allowances, though at a lower figure than the Beveridge Report suggested, is accepted, and so is that of a national medical service. These in themselves arc substantial advances, but Sir Kingsley Wood refused to think of going forward with children's allowances (though Sir John Anderson had indicated that the Government had decided for them even before the Beveridge Report was published) till the whole scheme was ready to be em- bodied in legislation, and he was at peculiar pains to emphasise the time that must elapse before the necessary negotiations with the medical profession could be carried through. Here, as every- where, the Government seemed bent bn creating the impression that instead of giving an inspiring lead it was reluctantly submitting to being pushed, and pushed as short a distance as possible.
But public opinion inside and outside the House has a consider- able propellant force, and the Cabinet has been constrained to approve the underlying principle of the whole Beveridge plan, that there shall be a single universal scheme, with one contribution by employer and employed, covering both health and unemployment insurance and the various other benefits proposed. It has also agreed that the health and unemployment benefits shall be on the same scale, though there is a radical dcparture from the Beveridge proposals in the stipulation that such benefits shall be limited in duration, not, as Sir William proposed, un- limited. Here, as in the much lesser matter of the funeral benefit payment, which the Government intends to fix at a lower figure than the Beveridge £20, there is room for reasonable argument— in which the Government, as well as its critics, should be prepared to retain an open mind. The reasons adduced for excluding workmen's compensation from the general social security scheme are wholly unconvincing. Sir John Anderson spoke as though this ti/ould tend to relieve employers of some of their responsibility, but the fact is that employers' risks are regularly insured against, and an injured workman would be likely to fare considerably better under a State scheme than he does at the hands of ail insurance company, to whose commercial interest it naturally is to contest money claims and limit payments as far as possible. On the subject of industrial insurance the Lord President was • intentionally or unintentionally vague. He referred to Sir .William Beveridge's valuable proposal that this should be converted into a public service, and, without declaring for or against the principle, firmly shelved it with the observation that the Government had quite enough to think of without taking that on. If the conclusion is drawn that the Government is unprepared to face a commercial interest which has made its poiemic intentions clear, the Govern- ment, once more, has only itself to thank.
A final verdict on the Government's attitude must necessarily be reserved till Mr. Morrison, the last Cabinet spokesman, has wound up the debate, and on his speech, as we have indicated, we are unable to comment this week. So ar the inevitable impres- sion has been created that the Government is bent on whittling away wherever possible proposals which have rightly captured not merely the imagination, but to a large extent, the practical business sense, of the country. Nothing is more encouraging than that they are supported with as much conviction and enthusiasm by an important body of young Conservatives as by the rank and file of the Labour Party. In that there is great hope. And ereat hopes are needed. We cannot face the transition from the war to the post-war World in the niggling spirit which so many passages in the two opening Government speeches revealed. No one has asked the Government to accept the Beveridge Report in its entirety as it stands, or to evade the great financial issues which it raises. But there is all the difference in the world between setting a goal (or in current jargon a target) and resolving to sur- mount the obstacles in the- way, and emphasising the obstacles with the zeal displayed by Sir Kingsley Wood in that direction. The Vital test is the creation of a Ministry of Social Security. if the Government refuses that its protestations of general admira- tion of the Beveridge scheme will convince and satisfy no one.
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