Today I want to talk to you about a great challenge: how we make the welfare state popular again. How we restore public trust and confidence in a welfare state that 50 years ago was acclaimed but today has so many wanting to bury it. I will argue that the only road to ‘a popular welfare state’ is radical welfare reform.

And I will set out our historic aim that ours is the first generation to end child poverty forever, and it will take a generation. It is a 20-year mission but I believe it can be done.

It is worth recapping briefly on the enormous amount of reform now underway. Partly because the Opposition aren’t quite sure what to say about it, it has been less controversial than many anticipated. But those who predicted timidity have been proven wholly wrong. In two years we have:

• • reformed the whole of student finance;

• • introduced the largest programme for the young unemployed ever put in place in Britain;

• • published, and are now legislating, the Welfare Reform Bill that will modernise the whole of disability provision, benefit claims and support in bereavement and introduce stakeholder pensions;

• • set out a framework for future pension reform that will alter the entirety of pension provision over the next 20 years, while introducing the Minimum Income Guarantee for today’s pensioners;

• • made radical proposals to reform the Child Support Agency and the whole of legal aid;

• • and of course, we are changing, through the Working Families Tax Credit, the new Family Credit and 20% increase in Child Benefit, the whole of provision for children and for families.

And we are now turning our attention to long-term care and Housing Benefit. It is the fullest programme of reform of any government this century.

And I believe it is wholly in the spirit of Beveridge.

Beveridge the man

Beveridge was perhaps the greatest British social reformer of the 20th century. He was a brilliant but difficult man. He devoted his life to understanding and abolishing poverty, starting here at Toynbee Hall. He was a remarkable talent and enthusiast. Permanent Secretary at 39. And able to say at 80 that “I am still radical and young enough to believe that mountains can be moved”. He was in the Liberal Party but really a forerunner of modern social democracy, arguing for top-class public services for all.