Ever since 1942, when Sir William Beveridge first identified the five evils haunting Britain - want, disease, ignorance, squalor and idleness - and proposed that the government do something to combat each of them, the welfare state has been the most important, most controversial, most politicized, most expensive and most loved element in British public life. Even those who seek to dismantle it agree that it represents the British state's finest single achievement. It proves what can be done when the best intentions are allied with a strong political will and, of course, the cash of ordinary Britons.