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SOCIAL SECURITY AND WELFARE
94 Last year we undertook a thorough and wide-ranging
review of what social welfare assistance should be for
those sections of the community. least able to help
themselves, whether by means of cash grants or services.
Following the publication of Green Papers and debates
on them in the last session, a comprehensive White Paper
will be published shortly. Its conclusions broadly are:-
a)
b)
that our cost-of-living-based system of
public assistance (or supplementary benefits
as it would be called elsewhere) is well
understood and accepted as the basis for
cash payments to relieve proved
-
that is
to say means-tested need, but that additional
payments were required for those dependent
upon public assistance for long periods, and
this has been done.
that more should be done for the aged and
particularly to make it easier for them to
continue life within their family or community
in dignity. The qualifying age for old age
allowance has been dropped from 75 to 70;
and a supplement for thos over 60 receiving