George Sclater-Booth, 1st Baron Basing

The Right Honourable The Lord Basing PC FRS DL
"The safe man". Caricature by Ape published in Vanity Fair in 1874.
President of the Local Government Board
In office 1874–1880
Monarch	Victoria
Prime Minister	Benjamin Disraeli
Preceded by	James Stansfeld
Succeeded by	John George Dodson
Financial Secretary to the Treasury
In office 4 March 1868 – 1 December 1868
Preceded by	George Ward Hunt
Succeeded by	Acton Smee Ayrton
Personal details
Born	19 May 1826 (1826-05-19) London
Died	22 October 1894 (1894-10-23) (aged 68) Hoddington House, Hampshire
Nationality	British
Political party	Conservative
Spouse	Lydia Birch (d. 1881)
Alma mater	Balliol College, Oxford

George Limbrey Sclater-Booth, 1st Baron Basing PC, FRS, DL (19 May 1826 – 22 October 1894), known as George Sclater-Booth before 1887, was a British Conservative politician. He served as President of the Local Government Board under Benjamin Disraeli between 1874 and 1880.

Born George Sclater, Basing was the son of William Lutley Sclater, of Hoddington House, Hampshire, and Anna Maria, daughter of William Bowyer. His brother was the naturalist Philip Sclater. He was educated at Winchester and Balliol College, Oxford, and was called to the Bar, Inner Temple, in 1851. In 1857 he assumed by Royal licence the additional surname of Booth to fulfil the will of Anna Maria Booth.^[1]

Basing was elected Member of Parliament for North Hampshire in 1857, which constituency he would represent until 1885, when the constituency was divided.^[2] He was then returned for Basingstoke, one of the new divisions of his old constituency, for which he sat until being made a peer in 1887.^[3] His first position in government was that of Parliamentary Secretary to the Poor Law Board in Lord Derby's third and final ministry, replacing Ralph Anstruther Earle (formerly Disraeli's private secretary), who had resigned over the Reform Bill of 1867. He later served as Financial Secretary to the Treasury in Benjamin Disraeli's short-lived 1868 government. When the Conservatives returned to power in 1874 under Disraeli he was made President of the Local Government Board, which post he held until the fall of the government in 1880. He was sworn of the Privy Council in 1874.^[4] In May 1874, he proposed an amendment to the Alkali Act 1863 which had aimed to curb muriatic acid gas emissions from factories using the Leblanc Process.^[5] Booth's Alkali Act Amendment Bill came into force on 1 March 1875. In 1887, he was raised to the peerage as Baron Basing, of Basing Byflete and of Hoddington, both in the County of Southampton.^[6]

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1876.^[7]

Lord Basing married Lydia Caroline, daughter of George Birch, in 1857. They had four sons and six daughters. She died in July 1881. Lord Basing survived her by thirteen years and died at Hoddington House, Hampshire, in October 1894, aged 68. He was succeeded in the barony by his eldest son, George.^[8]

In 1898 his daughter Eleanor Birch Sclater-Booth married Henry Wilson-Fox, who was later a Conservative MP.^[9]

• Blake, Robert (1966). Disraeli. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-19-832903-2. OCLC 8047.
• Leigh Rayment's Peerage Pages ^{[self-published source] [better source needed]}

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by George Sclater-Booth