The central theme of this closely argued book is that it is widely agreed in Britain that fraud is rife in the welfare system and should be eliminated. This was confirmed recently by the announcement of Britain’s first female Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, when introducing in parliament the first budget of the recently elected Labour government, that Labour would use “innovative new methods- and provide new legal powers to crackdown on fraudsters.” She also announced reforms to health and disability benefits “to ensure the system supports people who can work to remain in or start employment in a way that is fair and fiscally sustainable.” We await details of both reforms. She was criticized by disability charities for implying support for the widespread view that the current high levels of unemployment among people claiming ill health or disability were driven by fraud.

As King points out, it is also widely believed that assumptions about the extent of fraud have emerged and grown recently, encouraged by parts of the popular press, on social media and by some, generally right-wing, politicians. His major theme is that such attitudes are by no means new, products of modern conditions or means of communication but have existed throughout the history of English/British public welfare since the foundation of the Poor Law in 1601. He builds this argument upon a wide range of documentary sources from the long period since 1601 and human voices he has gathered from focus groups, interviews and published oral histories for opinions in the recent past and present. The outcome is a detailed account of the complex history of welfare policy and practice and popular experiences and perceptions of it since 1601. King reveals that key features of this history include the diverse ways that fraud has been and is defined and performed, the extreme difficulties of identifying it and the consequent difficulty—ultimately the impossibility—of quantifying it. It can be deliberate but often unintentional due to complex and changing official rules and personal circumstances. Awareness of this uncertainty has always aroused some popular sympathy with alleged fraudsters and deterred official investigation and prosecution due to the difficulties, time and costs involved. But certain social groups have throughout time been especially vulnerable to suspicion of fraud, including single mothers, people without a fixed address, vagrants, immigrants, and recently, as suggested above, disabled people.

Through time, underlying belief in widespread fraud have been the assumptions that fraudsters are attracted by the generosity of the welfare system, opting for welfare rather than work, that poor people are inherently untrustworthy and unemployment voluntary, despite strong evidence to the contrary. King rightly argues that the British welfare system has never been generous but always residual, providing basic payments insufficient for survival without a supplement, largely due to policymakers’ desire to deter fraud and avoid making welfare preferable to even low-paid work, a mode of deterrence easier for them than the difficult tasks of pursuing and detecting fraud. From 1945 the system was more generous than before, but the postwar Labour government did not implement Beveridge’s proposed full subsistence pensions and other benefits, never intended to provide comfortable lives but adequate for all essential needs. Large numbers of state pensioners have always needed a means-tested supplement to one of the lowest state pensions in the developed world. Labour’s welfare state continued to the late 1970s. King takes the stereotypical view of the 1970s as a period of strife and decline. In fact, welfare benefits and services reached their peak level under Labour in the late 1970s, though they remained limited and largely residual, before a severe decline under Thatcher in the 1980s. There was some revival under New Labour from 1997, though King rightly points out that Blair and Brown preserved many features of residualism, including means-testing. Decline returned when the Conservatives returned to government 2010–2024. Since devolution in 1999 welfare in Scotland and Wales has been more generous than in England, but this is proving costly. The book extends our knowledge not only of the history of fraud but of the wider welfare system and how it has and has not changed over time, of popular and official attitudes to it, of the conditions of poor people in various times and contexts and attitudes to them and their responses.

King concludes that the welfare system needs fundamental reform. It should, at last, provide the income needed for a minimum socially acceptable standard of living, with clear rules about who qualifies and on what conditions, including a clear obligation upon “welfare citizens,” as King calls those with a right to claim welfare, to contribute to society including through work when possible. All of which Beveridge recommended. The reformed system should aim to reduce inequality and promote social inclusion and could be funded by higher taxation. King recognizes that reform raises difficult problems, including to what extent claimants should be required to work even for pay below benefit level, requiring a national debate, also about how reforms to a system so long established can be implemented and funded. He believes that effective discussion requires understanding of the history of the system and of the nature and reasons for its weakness, also of the views, needs, and experiences of welfare claimants, too often neglected. He proposes a Royal Commission on a future welfare system.

He shows no real optimism that politicians of any party recognize the depth of the problem and the urgent need for reform. The book was completed before the July 2024 election brought Labour back to power, but Reeves’ budget indicated no desire for fundamental welfare reform to diminish the massive level of poverty in 2024, the unprecedented homelessness and resort to foodbanks. King’s book provides an original and valuable survey of the long history of British welfare and the remarkable continuity of its principles. Unfortunately, it is rather awkwardly written and repetitious, unlikely to appeal to a readership beyond academics or to influence popular or political ideas about welfare as its ideas and values should.