Lloyd George's "People's Budget" - transcript

David Lloyd George was the longest serving Chancellor of the Exchequer in the 20th century, before becoming Prime Minister in 1916.

His "People's Budget" of 1909 was one of the most controversial of all time. It proposed a large increase in the tax burden on the landed classes to pay for higher social spending.

The House of Lords vetoed the new budget leading to a constitutional crisis and two general elections in 1910. The 1911 Parliament Act cemented the supremecy of the House of Commons in the Constitution and prevented the upper house from vetoing any public legislation that originated in and had been approved by the Commons.

Listen to Lloyd George explain why the new taxes were being intoduced:

• "People's Budget"- mp3

Read the Transcript:

No Chancellor of the Exchequer in modern times has ever had to raise so much money for the necessities of the country. The objects for which this new taxation is imposed are not challenged by any party in the land. The budget therefore inflicts no gratuitous burdens on the community.

We want more money in order to strengthen the Navy, so as to keep our shores free from any possible invader; to provide pensions that will give comfort to a million men and women in their declining years; and to carry out many a long- desired and long-promised plan of social reform to redeem the people from anxieties and sufferings that are now so greviously oppressing them.

First, the budget will relieve the rates which press so hard on many people. Second, it will provide money for dealing with unemployment. Third, it will establish a fund to assist in developing to the full the resources of our own country so that men and women may be enabled to secure a comfortable and decent living on the land.

This fund will be devoted to the reclamation of waste, the encouragement of smallholdings, the improvement of livestock, the promotion of coperative efforts among farmers and smallholders, the establishment of rural transport so that produce may be carried more quickly and more cheaply to market, the planting of large areas of waste land with timber, the setting of chemists and experts in agricultural colleges, work to discover and teach new and improved methods of feeding stock and growing crops and generally help in enabling people to make the most of their own country.

Fourth, it raises from the motor car a large yearly income to make our roads safer and to make them freer from the nuisance of dust. Finally by leaving agricultural land and smallholdings absolutely intact it will at last compel the great landlords to contribute to the community a fair share of that increased value of their land which the community not their own exertions created.

I am one of the children of the people. I was brought up amongst them and I know their trials and their troubles. I therefore determined in framing the budget to add nothing to the anxieties of their lot, but to do something towards lightening those they already bear with such patience and fortitude.

No necessity of life will be dearer or more difficult to get owing to the budget. On the other hand, out of the money raised by taxing superfluity, funds will be established to secure honourable sustenance for the deserving old and to assist our great benefit societies in making adequate provision for sickness and infirmity and against a poverty which comes to the widows and orphans of those who fall in the battle of industry. This is the plan, this the purpose of this government. We mean to achieve these aims whoever stands in the way.

• More on Lloyd George
• More on PMs in history