A. Explain Why the House of Lords Rejected the 1909 Budget.

Topics: David Lloyd George, House of Lords, Conservative Party Pages: 2 (619 words) Published: November 1, 2012
The House of Lords in 1909 consisted mainly of aristocrats that where part of the conservative party. There are many different reasons for the rejection of the people’s budget, which was an idea, brought forward by David Lloyd George of the Liberal party. The swift rejection by the House of Lords sparked the first constitutional crisis of the 20th century. The first reason I am going to bring forward is that this new budget included the idea of taxation on the rich for money that would go to support the poor. A position in the House of Lords was inherited; this meant that the peers in the House of Lords were all relations with inherited wealth. This meant that the people the Budget targeted included the peers in the House of Lords; they did not feel it was fair to have their money taxed of them and saw it as an attack on them by the Liberals. So they rejected this budget so they wouldn’t be taxed. The peers believed that this budget was unfair on them ‘These (land) taxes are justifiable if you believe that land is national property’ however they did not believe this, they believed that the land they owned was theirs and no one should be able to take it from them as, that, they said could be seen as stealing- therefore they had hostility towards the new budget. This budget not only taxed them directly but indirectly to, David Lloyd George also wanted to put taxes on luxury goods such as motor cars and beer. This luxury goods tax also hit the wealthy; they didn’t think the poor should be getting their money because they thought the lower class were poor because they were lazy (they believed in self-help), therefore they did not think the lower classes deserved to be given their money because they were not doing anything to be worthy of it. Another reason is that the House of Lords felt that the Budget was too controversial; they thought that Lloyd George had other...
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