Editing Harold Wilson (section)

====Social Services and welfare====
{{Main|Labour government, 1964–1970#Social Services and welfare}}
[[File:This is a photograph of Harold Wilson visiting an Retirement Home in Washington, UK. The photograph was taken at some point in the late 1960's. (9713931559).jpg|thumb|upright|Wilson on a visit to a retirement home in [[Washington, County Durham]]]]

Various reforms to social welfare were also carried out during Wilson's time in office.<ref name="Ministry of Social Security 35-40">{{cite report |title=Report of the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance for the year 1965 |url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=coo.31924071641652&seq=55 |pages=35-40 |date=July 1966 |via=HathiTrust}}</ref><ref name="Chandler195">{{cite book |last1=Chandler |first1=J.A. |date=2007 |title=Explaining Local Government Local Government in Britain Since 1800 |url=https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Explaining_Local_Government/b0glBHiU9oAC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Explaining+Local+Government+Local+Government+in+Britain&printsec=frontcover |page=195 }}</ref><ref name="Trevitt">{{cite magazine |last1=Trevitt |first1=Vittorio |title=The British Labour Party and Welfare: The Legacies of the Attlee and Wilson Governments |url=https://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2024/10/18/the-british-labour-party-and-welfare-the-legacies-of-the-attlee-and-wilson-governments |magazine=History is Now Magazine |date=18 October 2024 }}</ref><ref name="Mulé92">{{cite book |last1=Mulé |first1=Rosa |date=2001 |title=Political Parties, Games and Redistribution |url=https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Political_Parties_Games_and_Redistributi/FbtDBbxfDU8C?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Political+Parties,+Games+and+Redistribution+Rosa+Mul%C3%A9+earnings-related+supplements+1966&pg=PA92&printsec=frontcover |page=92 |publisher=Cambridge University Press }}</ref> According to [[Tony Atkinson]], social security received much more attention from the first Wilson government than it did during the previous thirteen years of Conservative government.<ref name="inequality"/> Following its victory in the [[1964 United Kingdom general election|1964 general election]], Wilson's government began to increase social benefits. [[Prescription charges]] for medicines were abolished immediately,{{efn|however, they were reinstated two years later}} while pensions were raised to a record 21% of average male industrial wages. In 1966, the system of [[National Assistance]] (a social assistance scheme for the poor) was overhauled and renamed [[Supplementary Benefit]]. Before the 1966 election, the [[widow's pension]] was tripled. Due to austerity measures following an economic crisis, prescription charges were re-introduced in 1968 as an alternative to cutting the hospital building programme, although those sections of the population who were most in need (including supplementary benefit claimants, the long-term sick, children, and pensioners) were exempted from charges.<ref name="ReferenceC">{{cite book |title=Labour's First Century |editor-first1=Duncan |editor-last1=Tanner |editor-link1=Duncan Tanner |editor-first2=Pat |editor-last2=Thane |editor-link2= Pat Thane |editor-first3=Nick |editor-last3=Tiratsoo |date=2000 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |page=??? |url=https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Labour_s_First_Century/Ogih0ZGu2DMC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Labour%27s+First+Century&printsec=frontcover}}</ref>

The widow's earning rule was also abolished,<ref name="ponting"/> while a range of new social benefits was introduced. An Act was passed which replaced National Assistance with [[Supplementary Benefit]]s. The new Act laid down that people who satisfied its conditions were entitled to these noncontributory benefits. The means test was replaced with a statement of income, and benefit rates for pensioners (the great majority of claimants) were increased, granting them a real gain in income.  Unlike the National Assistance scheme, which operated on a discretionary basis, the new Supplementary Benefits scheme was a right of every citizen who found himself or herself in severe difficulties. Those persons over the retirement age with no means who were considered to be unable to live on the basic pension (which provided less than what the government deemed as necessary for subsistence) became entitled to a "long-term" allowance of an extra few shillings a week. Some simplification of the procedure for claiming benefits was also introduced.<ref name="ReferenceN"/> From 1966, an exceptionally severe disablement allowance was added, "for those claimants receiving constant attendance allowance which was paid to those with the higher or intermediate rates of constant attendance allowance and who were exceptionally severely disabled."<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4wxjQFu2zsMC&q=From+1966%2C+following+a+recommendation+of+the+McCorquodale&pg=PA471|title=Social Security Law in Context|isbn=9780198763086|last1=Harris|first1=Neville&nbsp;S.|year=2000|publisher=Oxford University Press |access-date=1 November 2020|archive-date=17 April 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210417194150/https://books.google.com/books?id=4wxjQFu2zsMC&q=From+1966,+following+a+recommendation+of+the+McCorquodale&pg=PA471|url-status=live}}</ref> Redundancy payments were introduced in 1965 to lessen the impact of unemployment, and earnings-related benefits for maternity,<ref>{{cite web |author=The Committee Office, House of Commons |url=https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmsocsec/56/9112407.htm |title=House of Commons – Social Security – Minutes of Evidence |publisher=Publications.parliament.uk |date=13 December 1999 |access-date=10 April 2014 |archive-date=19 November 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171119215652/https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmselect/cmsocsec/56/9112407.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> unemployment, sickness, industrial injuries and widowhood were introduced in 1966, followed by the replacement of flat-rate family allowances with an earnings-related scheme in 1968.<ref name="cook"/> From July 1966 onwards, the temporary allowance for widows of severely disabled pensioners was extended from 13 to 26 weeks.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Labour Party (Great Britain). Conference|title=Report of the Annual Conference and Special Conference of the Labour Party|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=zOwNAQAAMAAJ&q=From+July,+1966,+the+temporary+allowance+for+the+widow+of+a+severely+disabled+pensioner+was+extended+from+1+3+weeks+to+26+weeks.|website=Google Books|access-date=13 September 2015|archive-date=17 April 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210417194153/https://books.google.com/books?id=zOwNAQAAMAAJ&q=From+July,+1966,+the+temporary+allowance+for+the+widow+of+a+severely+disabled+pensioner+was+extended+from+1+3+weeks+to+26+weeks.|url-status=live}}</ref>

Increases were made in pensions and other benefits during Wilson's first year in office that were the largest ever real term increases carried out up until that point.<ref name="Timmins">''The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State'' by Nicholas Timmins.</ref> Social security benefits were markedly increased during Wilson's first two years in office, as characterised by a budget passed in the final quarter of 1964 which raised the standard benefit rates for old age, sickness and invalidity by 18.5%.<ref name="Taxation">''Taxation, Wage Bargaining, and Unemployment'' by Isabela Mares.</ref> In 1965, the government increased the national assistance rate to a higher level relative to earnings, and via annual adjustments, broadly maintained the rate at between 19% and 20% of gross industrial earnings until the start of 1970.<ref name="inequality"/> Through a series of ad hoc annual upratings, as noted by one study, Wilson's government "generally maintained the value of benefits in relation to earnings".<ref>Testing the Limits of Social Welfare International perspectives on policy changes in nine countries edited by Robert Morris, University Press of New England, 1988, p.45 </ref>

In the five years from 1964 up until the last increases made by the First Wilson Government, pensions went up by 23% in real terms, supplementary benefits by 26% in real terms, and sickness and unemployment benefits by 153% in real terms (largely as a result of the introduction of earnings-related benefits in 1967).<ref name="auto1">''The Labour Party in Crisis'' by Paul Whiteley.</ref>