The ‘Welfare State’ was the crowning achievement of the first majority Labour administrations, the post-war Attlee governments of 1945-51, but the blueprint for the provision of help was greatly influenced by one man, a civil servant and academic, Sir William Beveridge. The Social Insurance and Allied Services Report, 1942, usually called the Beveridge Report, which he alone signed, was the work of a civil service inter-departmental committee that met in 1941-2, during the dark days of the Second World War. The Report said:

The aim of the Plan for Social Security is to abolish want by ensuring that every citizen willing to serve according to his powers has at all times an income sufficient to meet his responsibilities … want is a needless scandal due to not taking the trouble to prevent it … Now, when the war is abolishing landmarks of every kind, is the opportunity for using experience in a clear field. A revolutionary moment in the world's history is a time for revolutions, not patching … Want is only one of the five giants on the road to reconstruction and in some ways the easiest to attack. The others are Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness … Social security must be achieved by co-operation between the State and the individual …

The centre of the state-managed post-war social order was the establishment of compulsory and comprehensive insurance, implemented by the National Insurance Act, 1946. Payments for this insurance came from the State, employers and the employed. Only married women not working were exempt. Payments (that is, benefits) were made for unemployment, sickness, maternity and funerals and for pensions (women over 60, men over 65). Further schemes paid money for industrial injuries (Industrial Injuries Act, 1946), for the cost of rearing children (Family Allowances Act, 1945) and for deep-seated financial need (National Assistance Act, 1946). Complementary to these financial measures, the National Health Act, 1946, established a health service with free medical, dental and optical care for all. General practitioners (often called GPs or family doctors) were responsible for primary care and 3,500 hospitals were taken over from existing organisations and local authorities. The whole service was to be financed by the State in the same way that the Armed Forces and national defence were state provisions. Large hospital bills for those who could barely pay and suffering and anxiety because of inability to pay for treatment were things of the past. The main changes became operational on 5 July 1948, marked by a broadcast to the country by the Prime Minister, Clement Attlee. It was the climax of arguably the most industrious and reforming government of the century. The enthusiasm was captured by The Times comment:

The British public join together in a single national friendly society for mutual support during the common misfortunes of life. … The new social security system is, as the Prime Minister said … the most comprehensive of its kind ever introduced in any country …

Associated with these provisions of insurance in the post-war reconstruction were changes in education and housing. Compulsory schooling from five to 15, provided free by local authorities, had been introduced by the non-party ‘Butler’ Education Act in 1944. The remedy of the shortage of housing became a big issue. More houses were built in Britain in the five years after 1945 than any European country and subsidies were given to local authorities to build ‘council houses’. By 1956 over 25 per cent lived in publicly-owned houses.

However substantial and comprehensive the changes, many were developments of earlier provisions, particularly insurance, founded on the National Insurance Act of 1911, introduced by Lloyd George during the pre-war ‘New Liberalism’ administrations. The 1911 scheme had been operated through existing friendly societies and applied only to workers in a few industries so only 2.5 million workers could benefit. Other earlier foundations were the Workmen’s Compensation Act, 1897, which the Industrial Injuries Act replaced while the National Assistance Act replaced poor relief arrangements that stretched back to the New Poor Law of 1834.

The idea of the Welfare State was largely accepted by both major parties (consensus politics) after 1951 until the radical Thatcher administrations after 1979. Thatcher opposed a welfare system that discouraged thrift and bred bureaucracy while the size of the ‘welfare’ budget, partly driven by increased life expectancy, led to a review of welfare and degrees of ‘retreat’ in, for example, pensions, housing and healthcare.