How successful were the liberal the conflicts with the House of Lords in 1909?

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How successful were the liberal the conflict with the House of Lords in 1909

  Liberal had reduced the veto power of House of Lords in legislative program by holding a general election soon after the rejection of “people’s” budget in 1909, which is ultimately to redistribute the wealth of the rich such as increasing taxation to higher salary earners, requiring surveys to land for taxation. It is argued that to what extend liberal had succeeded in this impact. Four aspects of Britain was brought to evaluate this, continuing social reform, House of Lords reform, national security enhancement, and resettlement of home rule.

In the first place, to bring out a social reform was liberal’s primary purpose, and they were successful in the respect of the fact that they had achieved it. Liberal enforced a series of domestic policies so as to bring out a radical reform within society in a sense of founding a welfare state and ascending the national efficiency. This brought back to an idea of state support of individual well-being, and, in turn, demanded a fairly large amount of money to implement. For example, national insurance act in 1911 was to provide a payment of 50p a week for a person who was off work because of illness, and disablement payment was 25p. The old age pension act introduced a non-contributory scheme, providing 25p a week as rights to those over 70. In addition, the government used to be a type which promoting lassie-faire so that the government expenditure was relatively lower; income tax was subsequently lower, and individualism was encouraged. Consequently, the government deposit was virtually insufficient to enforce this large scaled program. They should, therefore, search for the new way of generating an enough amount of money constitutionally, which then primarily targeted on the riches. This was, of course, disfavoured by members of House of Lords as their prevailage could damage through this. As a result of rejection of people’s budget, the special power peers were holding was revealed negatively to the public and enhanced intension between House of Lords and House of Commons, which conducted to second general election to reform House of Lords.

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In spite of this, the pass of the people’s budget, enabled the super tax on the rich, who are initially landowners and industrial owners, which subsequently brings a cut on employment in a large scale to fit the super tax on them. Consequently, the people’s budget eventually brings the suffrage back to those in working class, and it will then strengthen the intension between working class and capital owners, and strike will increase to a higher rate, which can reduce the industrial efficiency. Moreover, high employment brings social misery towards the government, which violated from the liberal primary aim that ...

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