On This Day

05 November 1909

The government prepares an alternative budget

The Liberal Party takes the extraordinary step of drafting a second Budget (Finance (Number Two) Bill) on the assumption that the radical 1909 People’s Budget, introduced principally to raise taxes for the Liberal government’s social welfare programmes, is rejected. However, it decides a few days later not to present the alternative Budget, should the original one be rejected, as this would concede the right to decide on government finances to the House of Lords and the party is becoming increasingly focused on the constitutional question of the peers versus the people.