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Concept
People's Budget
Summary
The 1909/1910 People's Budget was a proposal of the Liberal government that introduced unprecedented taxes on the lands and incomes of Britain's wealthy to fund new social welfare programmes. It passed the House of Commons in 1909 but was blocked by the House of Lords for a year and became law in April 1910.
It was championed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, and his young ally Winston Churchill, who was then President of the Board of Trade and a fellow Liberal; called the "Terrible Twins" by certain Conservative contemporaries.
William Manchester, one of Churchill's biographers, called the People's Budget a "revolutionary concept" because it was the first budget in British history with the expressed intent of redistributing wealth equally amongst the British population. It was a key issue of contention between the Liberal government and the Conservative-dominated House of Lords, leading to two general elections in 1910 and the enactment of the Parliament Act 1911.
The Budget was introduced in the British Parliament by David Lloyd George on 29 April 1909. Lloyd George argued that the People's Budget would eliminate poverty, and commended it thus:
This is a war Budget. It is for raising money to wage implacable warfare against poverty and squalidness. I cannot help hoping and believing that before this generation has passed away, we shall have advanced a great step towards that good time, when poverty, and the wretchedness and human degradation which always follows in its camp, will be as remote to the people of this country as the wolves which once infested its forests.
The budget included several proposed tax increases to fund the Liberal welfare reforms. Income tax was held at nine pence in the pound (9d, or 3.75%) on incomes less than £2,000, which was equivalent to roughly £225,000 in today's money—but a higher rate of one shilling (12d, or 5%) was proposed on incomes greater than £2,000, and an additional surcharge or supertax of 6d (a further 2.
Official source
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