Nigel Lawson

Early life

Lawson was born in 1932 to a wealthy Jewish family living in Hampstead, London. His father, Ralph Lawson (1904–1982), was the owner of a commodity-trading firm in the City of London, while his mother, Joan Elisa (Davis), was also from a prosperous family of stockbrokers. His paternal grandfather, Gustav Leibson, a merchant from Mitau (now Jelgava in Latvia), changed his name from Leibson to Lawson in 1925, having become a British Citizen in 1911.

Education

Lawson was educated at two independent schools: at Beechwood Park School in Markyate (nr. St Albans) in Hertfordshire, followed by Westminster School in London (following in his father's footsteps), and Christ Church, Oxford, where he gained a first-class honours degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.

Life and career

Lawson carried out his National Service as a Royal Navy officer, during which time he commanded a fast patrol boat, HMS Gay Charger.

Lawson began his career as a journalist at the Financial Times in 1956, writing the Lexicon column. He progressed to the positions of City editor of The Sunday Telegraph in 1961 – where he introduced his friend Jim Slater's Capitalist investing column – and then editor of The Spectator (1966–1970).

Early political career

Lawson stood unsuccessfully at the 1970 General Election for the Eton and Slough seat before becoming Member of Parliament for Blaby in Leicestershire in February 1974, which seat he held until retiring at the 1992 General Election.

While in Opposition, Lawson co-ordinated tactics with rebellious Government backbenchers Jeff Rooker and Audrey Wise to secure legislation providing for the automatic indexation of tax thresholds to prevent the tax burden being increased by inflation (typically in excess of 10% per annum during that Parliament).

Financial Secretary to the Treasury

On the election of Margaret Thatcher's government, Lawson was appointed to the post of Financial Secretary to the Treasury. Although this is the fourth-ranking political position in the UK Treasury, Lawson's energy in office was reflected in such measures as the ending of unofficial state controls on mortgage lending, the abolition of exchange controls in October 1979 and the publication of the Medium Term financial Strategy. This document set the course for both the monetary and fiscal sides of the new government's economic policy, though the extent to which the subsequent trajectory of policy and outcome matched that projected is still a matter for debate.

Secretary of State for Energy

In the Cabinet reshuffle of September 1981, Lawson was promoted to the position of Secretary of State for Energy. In this role his most significant action was to prepare for what he saw as an inevitable full-scale strike in the coal industry (then state-owned since nationalisation by the post-war government of Clement Attlee) over the closure of pits whose uneconomic operation accounted for the coal industry's business losses and consequent requirement for state subsidy. He was a key proponent of the Thatcher Government's privatisation policy. During his tenure at the Department of Energy he set the course for the later privatisations of the gas and electricity industries and on his return to the Treasury he worked closely with the Department of Trade and Industry in privatising British Airways, British Telecom, and British Gas.

Chancellor of the Exchequer

After the Government's re-election in 1983, Lawson was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in succession to Geoffrey Howe. The early years of Lawson's chancellorship were associated with tax reform. The 1984 Budget reformed corporate taxes by a combination of reduced rates and reduced allowances. The 1985 Budget continued the trend of shifting from direct to indirect taxes by reducing National Insurance contributions for the lower-paid while extending the base of value added tax.

During these two years Lawson's public image remained low-key, but from the 1986 Budget (in which he resumed the reduction of the standard rate of personal Income Tax from the 30% rate to which it had been lowered in Howe's 1979 Budget), his stock rose as unemployment began to fall from the middle of 1986 (employment growth having resumed over three years earlier). Lawson also changed the budget deficit from £10.5 billion (3.7% of GDP) in 1983 to a budget surplus of £3.9 billion in 1988 and £4.1 billion in 1989, the year of his resignation. During his tenure the rate of taxation also came down. The basic rate was reduced from 30% in 1983 to 25% by 1988. The top rate of tax also came down from 60% to 40% in 1988 and the four other higher rates were removed, leaving a system of personal taxation in which there was no rate anywhere in excess of 40 per cent.

In 1986 the City of London's financial markets were deregulated in the so-called 'Big Bang'. In an interview in 2010 Nigel Lawson said that an unintended consequence of the Big Bang was the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

The trajectory taken by the UK economy from this point on is typically described as "The Lawson Boom" by analogy with the phrase "The Barber Boom" which describes an earlier period of rapid expansion under the tenure as Chancellor of Anthony Barber in the Conservative Government of Prime Minister Heath (1970 to 1974). Critics of Lawson assert that a combination of the abandonment of monetarism, the adoption of a de facto exchange-rate target of 3 Deutsche marks to the pound (ruling out interest-rate rises), and excessive fiscal laxity (in particular the 1988 Budget) unleashed an inflationary spiral.

Lawson, in his own defence, attributes the boom largely to the effects of various measures of financial deregulation. Insofar as Lawson acknowledges policy errors, he attributes them to a failure to raise interest rates during 1986 and considers that had Margaret Thatcher not vetoed the UK joining the European Exchange Rate Mechanism in November 1985 it might have been possible to adjust to these beneficial changes in the arena of microeconomics with less macroeconomic turbulence. Lawson also ascribes the difficulty of conducting monetary policy to Goodhart's Law.

His tax cuts, beginning in 1986, resulted in the "Lawson Boom" of the British economy, which had halved unemployment from more than 3,000,000 by the end of 1989. However, this led to a rise in inflation from 3% to more than 8% during 1988, which resulted in interest rates doubling to 15% in the space of 18 months, and remaining high in spite of the 1990–1992 recession which saw unemployment rise nearly as high as the level seen before the boom began.

Lawson opposed the introduction of the Community Charge (nicknamed the poll tax) as a replacement for the previous rating system for the local financing element of local government revenue. His dissent was confined to deliberations within the Cabinet, where he found few allies and where he was over-ruled by the Prime Minister and by the ministerial team of the department responsible (Department of the Environment).

The issue of exchange-rate mechanism membership continued to fester between Lawson and Thatcher and was exacerbated by the re-employment by Thatcher of Sir Alan Walters as personal economic adviser. Lawson's conduct of policy had become a struggle to maintain credibility once the August 1988 trade deficit revealed the strength of the expansion of domestic demand. As orthodox monetarists, Lawson and Thatcher agreed to a steady rise in interest rates to restrain demand, but this had the effect of inflating the headline inflation figure.

Resignation

After a further year in office in these circumstances Lawson felt that public articulation of differences between an exchange-rate monetarist, as he had become, and the views of Walters (who continued to favour a floating exchange rate) were making his job impossible and he resigned. He was succeeded in the office of Chancellor by John Major.

Lawson's tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer was longer than that of any of his predecessors since David Lloyd George, who served from 1908 to 1915. This was subsequently passed by Labour's Gordon Brown (1997–2007).

Retirement

After retiring from front-bench politics, Lawson decided, on his doctor's advice, to tackle his weight problem. He is 5 feet 10 inches (178 cm) tall; he lost five stone (70 pounds, 30 kg) from 17 stone, or 238 pounds (108 kg) to 12 stone, or 168 pounds (76 kilograms) – (BMI 34 to 24) in a matter of a few months, dramatically changing his appearance, and went on to publish the best-selling The Nigel Lawson Diet Book.

On 1 July 1992 he was given a life peerage as Baron Lawson of Blaby, of Newnham in the County of Northamptonshire.

In 1996, Lawson appeared on the BBC satirical and topical quiz show Have I Got News For You and, as a former Chancellor (the position of Chancellor being regarded as one of the "big four" Government positions, q.v.. Great Offices of State) he had held the highest political office of any guest. He occasionally appears as a guest on his daughter Nigella's cookery shows.

Lawson serves on the advisory board of the Conservative magazine Standpoint.

Corporate roles

Expenses scandal

During the United Kingdom parliamentary expenses scandal, it was revealed that Lawson managed to claim £16,000 in overnight allowances by registering his farmhouse in Gascony as his main residence.

Position on global warming

Lawson is a global warming sceptic and believes that man-made global warming is exaggerated.

In 2004, along with six others, Lawson wrote a letter to The Times criticising the Kyoto Protocol and claiming that there were substantial scientific uncertainties surrounding climate change. In 2005, the House of Lords Economics Affairs Select Committee, with Lawson as a member, undertook an inquiry into climate change. In their report, the Committee recommend the HM Treasury take a more active role in climate policy. The objectivity of the IPCC process is questioned, and changes are suggested in the UK's contribution to future international climate change negotiations. The report cites a mismatch between the economic costs and benefits of climate policy, and also criticises the greenhouse gas emission reduction targets set in the Kyoto Protocol. In response to the report, Michael Grubb, Chief Economist of the Carbon Trust, wrote an article in Prospect magazine, defending the Kyoto Protocol and describing the committee's report as being "strikingly inconsistent". Lawson responded to Grubb's article, describing it as an example of the "intellectual bankruptcy of the [...] climate change establishment". Lawson also said that Kyoto's approach was "wrong-headed" and called on the IPCC to be "shut down".

At about the same time of the release of the House of Lords report, the UK Government launched the Stern Review, an inquiry undertaken by the HM Treasury and headed by Lord Stern. According to the Stern Review, published in 2006, the potential costs of climate change far exceed the costs of a programme to stabilise the climate. Lawson's lecture to the Centre for Policy Studies think-tank, published 1 November 2006 criticises the Stern Review and proposed what is described as a rational approach, advocating adaptation to changes in global climate, rather than attempting mitigation, i.e., reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Lawson also contributed to the 2007 documentary film The Great Global Warming Swindle.

In 2008, Lawson published a book expanding on his 2006 lecture to the Centre for Policy Studies, An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming. He argues the case that, although global warming is happening and will have negative consequences, the impact of these changes will be relatively moderate rather than apocalyptic. He criticises those "alarmist" politicians and scientists who predict catastrophe unless urgent action is taken. The book has, in its turn, been criticised by the IPCC: HM Government's Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir John Beddington, is reported to have told Lawson privately that he had "incorrect" and "misleading" claims in the book.

In July 2008 controversy was again incited when the Conservative magazine Standpoint published a transcript of a double interview with Lawson and Tory Policy Chief Oliver Letwin, in which Lawson described Letwin's views on global warming as "pie in the sky" and called on him and the Tory frontbench to "get real".

On 23 November 2009 Lawson became chairman of a new think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, a registered education charity.

In 2011, Bob Ward claimed the GWPF was "spreading errors" and "the 'facts'" Lawson "repeats are demonstrably inaccurate" Ward referred to Lawson's "many times" repeated statement that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change worst-case scenario predicted the rise in Third World living standards in 100 years would be limited to just nine times current levels. In fact, said Ward, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report estimates living standard will rise by a factor of 66 but crucially makes no assessment of how it will be affected by climate change. Ward also criticised Lawson for repeating in a 2010 BBC radio debate that Antarctic ice volumes were unchanged even after his error was highlighted by his opponent, Professor Kevin Anderson. According to Ward, Lawson provided no evidence to back his claim which is contrary to satellite measurements and he similarly incorrectly implied that the correlation between CO₂ and sea levels was uncertain as sea levels were rising more slowly since 1950 than before it. The current sea level rise is accelerating. Given the Charity Commission requires that statements by campaigning charities "must be factually accurate and have a legitimate evidence base" Ward suggested that they review the GWPF. Lawson's son Dominic Lawson is also a climate change sceptic, taking a similar viewpoint as his father in his columns in the Independent on Sunday.

Economy

Lawson was a critic of David Cameron's coalition government economic policy, describing spending cuts consultation plans as a "PR ploy". In November 2011 he called for the "orderly" dismantling of the euro.

In the media

Lawson was interviewed about the rise of Thatcherism for the 2006 BBC TV documentary series Tory! Tory! Tory!.

In 2010, he appeared on the Analysis programme to discuss banking reform. Lawson explained that the 2007–2012 global financial crisis was an unintended consequence of the 1986 Big Bang after investment banks merged with high street banks putting depositors' savings at risk.

Lawson has also appeared on the Business News Network in Canada to discuss global warming.

In a debate with other former cabinet ministers and prominent journalists, Lawson has argued that political life is more in need of ideas and direction than grand political visions.

Lawson is known for having coined several notable quotations, including "[t]o govern is to choose. To appear to be unable to choose is to appear to be unable to govern."

Personal and family life

Lord Lawson has been married twice, having children from both marriages.

Lord Lawson is a member of the Garrick, Beefsteak and Pratt's Clubs.

Styles of address