Editing David Lloyd George (section)

== President of the Board of Trade (1905–1908) ==
{{further|Education Act 1902#The failed Education Bill of 1906}}
[[File:ChurchillGeorge0001.jpg|thumb|left|upright|Lloyd George and [[Winston Churchill]] in 1907]]
In 1905, Lloyd George entered the new Liberal Cabinet of [[Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman]] as [[President of the Board of Trade]].<ref name="CrosbyWithRadical">{{harvnb|Crosby|2014|loc=ch. With Radical Intent?}}</ref>{{rp|63}}

The first priority on taking office was the repeal of the [[Education Act 1902]]. Lloyd George took the lead along with [[Augustine Birrell]], President of the Board of Education. Lloyd George appears to have been the dominant figure on the committee drawing up the bill in its later stages and insisted that the bill create a separate education committee for Wales. Birrell complained privately that the bill, introduced in the Commons on 9 April 1906, owed more to Lloyd George and that he himself had had little say in its contents.<ref name="CrosbyIntheCabinet">{{harvnb|Crosby|2014|loc=ch. In the Cabinet}}</ref>{{rp|74–77}} The bill passed the House of Commons greatly amended but was completely mangled by the House of Lords.<ref name="Daglish1994"/> For the rest of the year Lloyd George made numerous public speeches attacking the House of Lords for mutilating the bill with wrecking amendments, in defiance of the Liberals' electoral mandate to reform the 1902 Act. Lloyd George was rebuked by King [[Edward VII]] for these speeches: the Prime Minister defended him to the King's secretary [[Francis Knollys, 1st Viscount Knollys|Francis Knollys]], stating that his behaviour in Parliament was more constructive but that in speeches to the public "the combative spirit seems to get the better of him".<ref name="CrosbyIntheCabinet"/>{{rp|74–77}} No compromise was possible and the bill was abandoned, allowing the 1902 Act to continue in effect.<ref name="Daglish1994"/> As a result of Lloyd George's lobbying, a separate department for Wales{{refn|group=lower-alpha|Scotland had, and has, its own education system, separate from that of England and Wales.}} was created within the Board of Education.<ref name="CrosbyIntheCabinet"/>{{rp|74–77}}

Nonconformists were bitterly upset by the failure of the Liberal Party to reform the 1902 Education Act, its most important promise to them, and over time their support for the Liberal Party slowly fell away.<ref name="Richards1972">{{cite journal |last=Richards |first=Noel J. |title=The Education Bill of 1906 and the Decline of Political Nonconformity |journal=[[The Journal of Ecclesiastical History]] |publisher=Cambridge University Press |volume=23 |issue=1 |pages=49–63 |date=January 1972 |s2cid=145486496 |doi=10.1017/S0022046900055615}}</ref>

At the Board of Trade Lloyd George introduced legislation on many topics, from [[Merchant Shipping Act 1906|merchant shipping]] and the [[Port of London Act 1908|Port of London]] to [[Companies Act 1907|companies]] and railway regulation. His main achievement was in stopping a proposed national strike of the railway unions by brokering an agreement between the unions and the railway companies. While almost all the companies refused to recognise the unions, Lloyd George persuaded the companies to recognise elected representatives of the workers who sat with the company representatives on conciliation boards—one for each company. If those boards failed to agree then an arbitrator would be called upon.<ref name="CrosbyIntheCabinet"/>{{rp|69–73}}