The National Labour Organization wanted the insurance fund to work in a way that one being helped could not take advantage of the system. They wanted a limit on the time someone could receive benefits. Benefits, they argued, should be contingent on attendance to programs that trained you for suitable work. This program would also require the benefactor, while unemployed, to be taking steps to find work. If a person did not complete all required, that person came to be suspended for a period of time.
Social Insurance received its money from many places, including contributions form the state and from the self-employed as well. Money for the Social Insurance Fund flowed in from employers, also.
Some of the proposals the Beveridge Report suggested for the Household Means Test involved mandatory evaluations of health and wellness for anyone to be participating in the program. This process, also would help determine the amount received. The test did not differ for the unemployment either. At some point a representative of the insurance fund would visit your home and look around at items of value, then tell the participant to sell them in order to get more aid from the fund. In many cases, when the means appointed person approached these homes, the children would run out the back door. A child of working age could cause the insured a dock of benefits. Items of value were, naturally, hidden by many program participants, often at the homes of family members.
The new benefit proposal contained no means test and the masses generally preferred it that way, Any time someone, especially the government, interfered with a persons rights, the British took strong stances against such treatment. The coverage on the new unemployment would be indefinite coverage, i.e. as long as there is an unemployment problem, the coverage would continue. The initial person would not lose their benefits.
The ending of large scale unemployment came about as a result of a need for security. Basically, the programs put together by the state helped the society as a whole. People of Britain stuck by the decision of the government because they felt they were the right things to do. At one point, people during the war were not taking their war donation duties seriously and the government, citing a need for steel for the war, started cutting steel from peoples fences. They then would take the pirated steel place it on a barge, and dump it in the sea. Their act was designed to coerce people into a realisation that this was a Real War and that Britain needed her citizens’ help. The post war attitude differed immensely from the wartime attitude and the British became more helpful with government ideas, which included helping the unemployed. The training program, put together to prevent continued job loss, also helped the unemployed. These programs gave people a chance to work. When someone is on unemployment, often they are getting the bare minimum necessary to survive so working at the lowest paying job was still better, especially if there were to be the instatement of a minimum wage. The government did not hand out its benefits easily; often insurance payments were lower than payments of low paying jobs. The government did not want someone unemployed to earn more than someone working. The community would push someone to work also, in theory, because their taxes provided the assets of the insurance fund.
In response to the Beveridge Report, the government published the White Paper. This was like the Beveridge report but it was formed by the government and not by an unaffiliated individual. The White Paper then, could be called the professional version. The Beveridge Report was influential, not because it presented new ideas or new problems, but because it accurately described the problems, as seen by the unemployed and the general masses, and, furthermore, it presented solutions. When war started and the government ordered children out of the major cities to homes outside areas that may be bombed, the people in the homes who took in the evacuee children found that their overall health and condition was horrible and, thus the populace pushed for reform. So the government stepped up only after exposure of the quality of life of its citizenry and the publicised Beveridge Report. The White Paper was the governments response.
The White Paper accepted many of the aspects of the Beveridge Report. It agreed that the social insurance should cover people with sicknesses, the elderly, and the unemployed. The White Paper also called for was for a flat rate that every working citizen paid. It did not want different people paying differently into the fund. When benefits were paid it wanted everyone to be paid a flat rate, no matter one’s previous economic and social positions. The benefits, it stated, should be unbiased. The White Paper did not give people the right to continue benefits for a long period of time. A maximum of thirty weeks was allotted. People with good work records or a long time on the job could receive longer benefits. People whose benefits ran out could work and make new payments to the insurance fund. They could re-qualify for benefits again. White Paper stated that long-term benefits invited abuse and would not allow such abuse of the system. Furthermore, the government agreed that “training schemes are of the utmost importance in preventing unemployment and in securing fluidity of labour, and that claimants unreasonably refusing to undergo a course of training should be disqualified from receiving benefit. They are satisfied, however, that the requirement to undergo training after a certain period of unemployment to would not constitute an effective safeguard against possible abuse of benefit.” The White Paper had taken up training allowances as suggested in the Beveridge report. These benefits would be paid in the form of a high rate payment. The allowances were going to be paid not out of the Social Insurance Fund but by the Ministry of Labour. These benefits would include widows and self-employed individuals. In order to get any of these, insureds would still be required to participate in training schemes. Long-term unemployment was to be the States direct responsibility.
Overall the Beveridge report was an important part of the way of life in England and the way the government acted from that point on. The view of public opinion in forming the White Paper cannot be overlooked. The government responded to a request of the people with their White Paper Report, but really were following many ideas of the popular Beveridge Report. The British Government made changes to the report to suit the governments’ need while still satisfying, to a degree, the short-term needs of the people. The difference simply lie in the fact that the government would work with the needs of the people. Many benefits from this report, via local government and state government, play a large part in peoples lives. People were treated more equally: farmers, wives, children, the poor and rich, all had now had the benefit of government support. The income of family started to level off. Money was taken from military and redirected to the people. The aim went from fighting a war to rebuilding the country. The coalition government changed from looking at winning the war to rebuilding after the war. Whether or not relying on supply and demand as a means of post war economic reconciliation would be better than this form of legislated socialist intervention hardly mattered. The post war economic climate was controlled by the Bank of England, which worked hand in hand with the government, which helped fulfil a need to provide its citizenry with public funds. The system, under such management, has been a reliable saviour for its unemployed and otherwise unable citizens.