In the midst of the Second World War, the Liberal Civil Servant William Beveridge wrote of the terrible state he saw that Britain was in, and in his report, ‘Social Insurance and Allied Services’ published by the wartime Government in December 1942, he proposed remedies which gained immediate attention and after the war much Government-directed successful action.

Can Andy Burnham, despite the threat from hostile powers requiring now major escalation of British Defence forces, find remedies for the terrible mess which so many Britons believe defines the current state of our nation?

Are the perceived problems comparable?

Beveridge defined Five Great Evils in his report, naming them as Want, Disease, Squalor, Ignorance and Idleness. Modern interpretations describe his views as defining Want as poverty and inadequate personal income, Disease as lack of healthcare and widespread ill-health, Squalor as inadequate housing and unhygienic and overcrowded living conditions, and Idleness as reflecting high unemployment and lack of gainful work. Ignorance was seen as arising from inadequate national education. The parallels for the Labour Government today are clearly many, although the evil of ignorance can be perceived now in the spread of harm to young people through dangerous algorithms and the Social Media influencers, matters which the Burnham Government must tackle urgently.

Beveridge’s eventual great success was in matters relating to ‘Disease’, or healthcare and extended National Insurance. His conviction of the need for disease control and extended healthcare led to the creation of the Welfare State under the post-war Labour Government of Clement Attlee. Social insurance had begun under the Liberal Governments at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, and Beveridge advocated a flat-rate universal contribution from working people, in exchange for a flat rate universal benefit. National Insurance provisions were extended after the Second World War.

The challenge for Andy Burnham’s government in this area now, apart from the continuing great need to improve the effectiveness of the NHS, is how to continue to pay for adequate Universal Benefits for working people and Pensions for the retired. The Prime Minister is known to wish to improve the living standards of all, reduced by the austerity programme of the Tory hegemony and the rapid rise now, partly the result of the continuing war in the Middle East, of the cost of living. What would be the point therefore of cutting the Pension triple-lock payments, which give pensioners a modest minimum income, or reducing the rates of Universal Credit, Child Benefits and PIP, which also barely keep many households afloat?

His problem is surely to find a Beveridge-type programme, by which individuals and companies capable of contributing more to the National Economy are encouraged to invest and produce more. The Liberal Democrats can advise well on this, with our demand for greater involvement with the EU through for example applying to join the Single Market. We will surely applaud the Government’s efforts to enhance the employment prospects of young people by paying firms to afford to take them on for trial periods, and contribute to this by demanding further insurance assistance for small businesses hit by the Government’s increases in their costs.

On housing, it has been good to hear of Andy Burnham’s contacts with Cornwall MPs, showing his commitment to developing all areas of England besides Manchester and London, and his interest in the work of Truro’s Lib Dem MP Andrew George, who is promoting a bill in the Commons about the availability of social and affordable homes and making better provision for the powers of local authorities and local planning authorities. With our prompting and persuasion, in pursuit of our own aims for much greater provision of social housing, there should be more help provided for young people unable to leave the parental home because of the unavailability of sufficient affordable housing.

‘Want’ persists, as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s annual reports show, and it will take more than the (late) cessation by the Government of the two-child benefit cap to end poverty in this country. We should continue to press the Government to adopt our policy of Guaranteed Basic Income to alleviate deepest poverty.

To conclude: at the time of the launch of a new film about William Beveridge, entitled ‘The Man with a Plan’, starring Simon Callow, this is surely the ideal moment to begin to compare the achievements of the former great Liberal thinker, as carried out by his Labour Government successors, with the achievements of our new Prime Minister in facing enormous pressures from huge problems today. That we will assist and encourage him is a given, since we are the heirs of the thinking of William Beveridge.

* Katharine Pindar is a long-standing member of the Cumberland Lib Dems