William Beveridge's Welfare Reform

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This essay aims to evaluate the current welfare issue chosen: How the new National Health Service (NHS) bill and government funding cuts are affecting and will affect midwifery respectively. The history will be discussed, and an examination and analysis of political ideologies that have influenced the issue given. Sir William Beveridge is often referred to as the ‘architect of the welfare state.’ During the Second World War the then Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, commissioned him to investigate the current welfare situation and suggest ways of improving it (Timmins 2001). William Beveridge then produced The Beveridge Report of 1942. Beveridge proposed a system of national insurance that systematically led to the development of the ‘welfare state.’ The recommendations proposed were based on Beveridge’s ambitious goal to eradicate the five ‘giant evils’ that were forming a barrier to post war reconstruction; Poverty, Idleness, Want, Ignorance and Disease. 1953 heard William Beveridge say; “While the British people and the free world outside Britain were applauding the Beveridge Report, the Government of Britain…showed to the Report an attitude of marked reserve and to its author…show more content…
In 2010 the Conservative party won the public vote with their own individual manifesto not a coalition government with a new manifesto that is presented but not publicly voted for, or against. Therefore, theoretically the new NHS bill was never voted in but just given to us. Cuts and rows over pay, staff and pensions are creating a once gleaming bubble around the NHS to burst. With all the negative publicity it receives on a daily basis, assuming there are jobs left, you can be left wondering will anyone end up wanting to work for the NHS or have a career in nursing or midwifery? Will they be otherwise tempted to work privately with inevitably better pay, calmer working conditions and less fear for their
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