In June 1941, after pressure from the Trades Union Congress, Mr Greenwood, the Minister without Portfolio, announced in the House of Commons that he had arranged for a comprehensive survey of existing schemes for social insurance and allied services by an inter-departmental committee under the chairmanship of Sir William Beveridge. The survey of existing schemes was essentially complete by September, but owing to other commitments Beveridge did not then give his full attention to the problems raised by the survey. When he did so, he began to develop a comprehensive scheme going beyond the improvements in administrative detail that Ministers had expected. This put the officials on the committee in a difficult position, for being civil servants they could not sign a report, without consulting their Ministers and having them answer questions that would be asked of them later. If they did consult their Ministers and then signed a report, they would commit their Ministers individually and, given the number of departments involved, the Government, before the report was completely available. As a result, the Treasury successfully managed to reconstruct the committee so that the departmental officials became technical advisers and any eventual report became the sole responsibility of the chairman who would sign it alone.

As the reconstructed committee moved beyond its departmental enquiries, receiving evidence from outside bodies, Keynes became involved in several ways. Initially his contacts were with Beveridge himself, who sent him in March 1942 two memoranda outlining the heads of a possible scheme and the problems it would solve and his list of principal questions. […]