In 1931, after retiring as Secretary of the Prudential Assurance Company, he was appointed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Snowden to oversee a committee on national expenditure.

[3] After a run on the pound sterling raised the deficit to grow to £170 million in August 1931, Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald decided to implement the report's recommendations for budget cuts despite opposition from the rest of the Labour Party, leading to the collapse of his government and the formation of a new National Government led by MacDonald's breakaway National Labour Organisation alongside Conservatives and Liberals.

The marriage took place in the Theistic Church in Swallow Street, Piccadilly, London, and was officiated by Charles Voysey, a freethinking Yorkshire vicar who was deposed for publishing heretical sermons and for denying the doctrine of everlasting hell.

Lily's elder sister and suffragist, Florence Annie Strauss, had married MP and barrister-at-law Charles Augustus Vansittart Conybeare in the same church seven years earlier.

George and Lily May had three children:[5] For his services, May was made a KBE in the 1918 New Year Honours and was created a baronet, of The Eyot in the Baronetage of the United Kingdom, on 27 January 1931.