I hesitated for some time as to the subject matter of this chapter. I considered examining the present-day lessons that could be deduced from the Beveridge Report, to see what this remarkable document has to say about the design of social security for the next fifty years. However, this did not seem to me appropriate; and I sense that Beveridge himself would have been impatient with such an exercise. He was a man of his time. He would have recognised that the world has changed, and if he had reported today he would doubtless have written differently.

I considered therefore devoting the chapter to speculation as to what he might have written had he been alive today. To seek to extrapolate forward the evolution of his thinking. This too I rejected. Not only can I make no claim to be a Beveridge scholar, but, as Harris (1977) has brought out, his thinking on these issues went through several stages, which would make any attempt at extrapolation a difficult exercise. It also seemed to me presumptuous. In writing his report, Beveridge brought together an unrivalled blend of academic thought and administrative experience, a blend which leaves me simply humble in admiration.

I have therefore decided to do neither of these, but rather to present a personal view as to how we should seek to provide a national minimum -and, more broadly, a European minimum – in the years to come.