Llywydd, Friday, 1 December marked the seventy-fifth anniversary of the publication of the Beveridge report on 'Social Insurance and Allied Services'. This had been commissioned during the second world war by a committee responsible to Arthur Greenwood, then Minister with responsibility for post-conflict reconstruction. It's task was twofold: first, it aimed to carry out a survey of existing social insurance schemes; second, it was to make recommendations for the future, and it is in this regard that the report, when published in 1942, had its most far-reaching consequences.

Drafted by liberal economist, William Beveridge, the final document proposed a range of reforms to the existing system. At its heart were proposals to slay what Beveridge termed the five 'giant evils' in society: squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease. Instead, government should take steps to provide citizens with adequate income, healthcare, education, housing and employment. It was largely left to the 1945 Clement Attlee Government, having won the general election on a platform that committed Labour to addressing the 'giant evils', and, of course, to the role of Aneurin Bevan, to enact politics outlining the welfare state that we still recognise in this present day. 

There have been changes in the intervening years. Nicholas Timmins, biographer of the welfare state, notes some of these would be approved by Beveridge, others would be totally unrecognisable. But it is in its basic commitment to a shared set of values and services that we can best commemorate the report today.