The Liberal welfare reforms (1906–1914) were a series of acts of social legislation in the United Kingdom passed by the Liberal Party after the 1906 general election. They represent the Liberal Party's transition rejecting the old laissez-faire policies and enacting interventionist state policies against poverty and thus launching the modern British welfare state. David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill led in designing and passing the reforms, and building nationwide support.

The historian G. R. Searle argues that the reforms had multiple causes, including "the need to fend off the challenge of Labour; pure humanitarianism; the search for electoral popularity; considerations of National Efficiency; and a commitment to a modernised version of welfare capitalism." By implementing the reforms outside the English Poor Laws, the stigma attached to a needy person obtaining relief was also removed. After 1911 Liberals turned to other issues, but never abandoned their support for the welfare programmes.

During the 1906 general election campaign, neither of the two major parties (the Liberals and the Conservatives) made poverty an important election issue and no promises were made to introduce welfare reforms. The Liberals, led first by Henry Campbell-Bannerman and later H. H. Asquith, won a landslide victory and began introducing wide-ranging reforms as soon as they took office.

The Conservative government in office before the Liberals came to power passed the Unemployed Workmen Act 1905 and the Employment of Children Act 1905. Slum housing was also cleared for new houses to be built. Much of this legislation was left for local authorities to implement – their attitudes affected whether legislation was fully implemented. The Conservatives passed the Education Act 1902 that provided funds for denominational religious instruction in Church of England and Roman Catholic schools. The Nonconformists, who formed a major Liberal constituency, were outraged at the help to their theological enemies, but failed to repeal it.

A favourite goal of Protestant nonconformists was to sharply reduce the heavy drinking by closing as many pubs as possible. Asquith—although a heavy drinker—took the lead in 1908 by proposing to close about one-third of the 100,000 pubs in England and Wales, with the owners compensated through a new tax on surviving pubs. The brewers controlled the pubs and organised a stiff resistance, supported by the Conservatives, who repeatedly defeated the proposal in the House of Lords. However, the "People's Tax" of 1910 included a stiff tax on pubs, and during the First World War, their hours were sharply restricted from about 18 hours a day to 5+1⁄2. Beer and alcohol consumption fell in half from 1900 to 1920, in part because there were many new leisure opportunities.

In 1906 a major education bill failed to pass, to the annoyance of Nonconformists Protestants who were angry that since 1902 local rates were used to support Church of England schools. Liberals sought to limit religious teaching in all schools to vague nondenominational Christianity (as already required in state schools under the Cowper-Temple Clause of the 1870 Act). Under the proposal many Anglicans and Catholics would lose the right to use their schools to teach their religion to their children. The House of Lords, where the Liberals were outnumbered 5 to 1, rewrote the bill to make it more favourable to the Anglicans, so no compromise was possible. The Nonconformists had been a major factor in the Liberal landslide of 1906, and they dominated the Liberal front bench. But the bitter defeat of their highest priority now became a factor in their loss of enthusiasm for the Liberal Party, and played a key role in its decline.

Nevertheless, a few uncontroversial minor education bills did become law. The Education (Administrative Provisions) Act 1907 introduced what became known as the Free Place System. The Regulations for Secondary Schools issued that year authorised the payment of a £5 per head grant for each pupil between the ages of 12 and 18, and schools had to conform to certain requirements in order to attain this grant. Schools could not restrict admission to pupils belonging to particular religious denominations, governing bodies had to be reconstituted to include a number of representative governors (some of whom represented the LEA), and at least 25% of the annual intake should be pupils from elementary schools. The act also provided local education authorities (LEAs) with the power to acquire land for constructing new secondary schools, which led to the coming into being of many county and municipal secondary schools.

In 1907 the number of free scholarship places in secondary schools was increased. If working-class pupils passed a scholarship examination, then their fees would be paid for them by the Local Education Authority. One-quarter of places in most secondary schools would be reserved for scholarship pupils. Bright working-class children were therefore provided with the opportunity to climb "the educational ladder", while for those pupils who failed the scholarship exam, some LEAs had "Central Schools" which provided a practically based curriculum for children between the ages of 11 and 15.