Kingsley Wood

The Right Honourable Sir Kingsley Wood MP
Chancellor of the Exchequer
In office 12 May 1940 – 21 September 1943
Prime Minister	Winston Churchill
Preceded by	Sir John Simon
Succeeded by	Sir John Anderson
Lord Privy Seal
In office 3 April 1940 – 12 May 1940
Prime Minister	Neville Chamberlain
Preceded by	Samuel Hoare
Succeeded by	Clement Attlee
Secretary of State for Air
In office 16 May 1938 – 3 April 1940
Prime Minister	Neville Chamberlain
Preceded by	Philip Cunliffe-Lister
Succeeded by	Sir Samuel Hoare
Minister of Health
In office 7 June 1935 – 16 May 1938
Prime Minister	Stanley Baldwin Neville Chamberlain
Preceded by	Hilton Young
Succeeded by	Walter Elliot
Postmaster General
In office 25 August 1931 – 7 June 1935
Prime Minister	Ramsay MacDonald Stanley Baldwin
Preceded by	William Ormsby-Gore
Succeeded by	George Tryon
Member of Parliament for Woolwich West
In office 14 December 1918 – 21 September 1943
Preceded by	Office Created
Succeeded by	Francis Beech
Personal details
Born	Howard Kingsley Wood (1881-08-19)19 August 1881 Kingston-Upon-Hull, England
Died	21 September 1943(1943-09-21) (aged 62) London, England
Political party	Conservative
Spouse	Agnes Lilian ​ (m. 1905)​
Children	1 daughter

Sir Howard Kingsley Wood (19 August 1881 – 21 September 1943) was a British Conservative politician. The son of a Wesleyan Methodist minister, he qualified as a solicitor, and successfully specialised in industrial insurance. He became a member of the London County Council and then a Member of Parliament.

Wood served as junior minister to Neville Chamberlain at the Ministry of Health, establishing a close personal and political alliance. His first cabinet post was Postmaster General, in which he transformed the British Post Office from a bureaucracy to a business. As Secretary of State for Air in the months before the Second World War he oversaw a huge increase in the production of warplanes to bring Britain up to parity with Germany. When Winston Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940, Wood was made Chancellor of the Exchequer, in which post he adopted policies propounded by John Maynard Keynes, changing the role of HM Treasury from custodian of government income and expenditure to steering the entire British economy.

One of Wood's last innovations was the creation of Pay As You Earn, under which income tax is deducted from employees' current pay, rather than being collected retrospectively. This system remains in force in Britain. Wood died suddenly on the day on which the new system was to be announced to Parliament.