Nigel Lawson

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**Nigel Lawson**
Chancellor of the Exchequer
In office 11 June 1983 – 26 October 1989
Preceded by	Geoffrey Howe
Succeeded by	John Major

Born	March 11, 1932
Political party	Conservative

Nigel Lawson, Baron Lawson of Blaby, PC (born March 11, 1932), was a British politician, Chancellor of the Exchequer between June 1983 and October 1989. His tenure in that office was longer than that of any of his predecessors since David Lloyd George (1908 to 1915), though it was surpassed by Gordon Brown in September 2003. Lawson is the father of journalist and food writer Nigella Lawson, Dominic Lawson, the former editor of The Sunday Telegraph and Tom Lawson, housemaster of Chernocke House at Winchester College.

1 Early career
2 Chancellor of the Exchequer
3 After politics
4 Global warming debate
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Early career

After studying at Westminster and Christ Church, Oxford, Lawson began his career as a financial journalist and progressed to the positions of city editor of The Sunday Telegraph in 1961 and editor of The Spectator (1966–1970) before becoming Member of Parliament for Blaby in Leicestershire in 1974 (a position he held until retiring at the 1992 General Election). While in opposition, he co-ordinated tactics with 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).

On the election of Margaret Thatcher's government, Lawson was appointed to the position of Financial Secretary to the Treasury. Although this is the third-ranking political position in the British 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 (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.

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 nationalization by the post-war government of Clement Attlee) over the closure of pits whose operation accounted for the coal industry's business losses and consequent requirement for state subsidy.

Lawson was a key proponent of the Thatcher Government's privatization policy. During his tenure at the Department of Energy he set the course for the later privatizations of the gas and electricity industries and on his return to the Treasury he worked closely with the Department of Trade and Industry in privatizing British Airways, British Telecom, and British Gas.

[edit] Chancellor of the Exchequer

After the government's re-election in 1983, Lawson was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer in succession to Sir 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 Sir Geoffrey 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).

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 Sir Edward 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 deutschmarks 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. In so far 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.

Lawson opposed the introduction of the poll tax or a Community Charge, 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 overruled by the Prime Minister and by the ministerial team of the responsible department (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 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. 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. Lawson coined the phrase that he did so "to spend more time with his family." He was succeeded in the office of Chancellor by Sir John Major.

[edit] After politics

After retiring from front-bench politics, Lawson decided, on his doctor's advice, to tackle his weight problem. He lost five stone (70 pounds, 30 kg) in a matter of a few months, dramatically changing his appearance and went on to publish a best-selling diet book. On 1 July 1992 he was created a life peer as Baron Lawson of Blaby, of Newnham in the County of Northamptonshire.

In 1996, Lawson appeared on the BBC topical quiz show Have I Got News For You and, as a former Chancellor (regarded as one of the "big four" Government positions) became something of a coup as the guest who had previously held the highest political office. He was, however, happy to go on the show and take a mild amount of ribbing from the regulars as he was plugging his diet book at the time.

Lawson has been married twice:

Vanessa Salmon (whose family founded the Lyons Corner House chain) (1955 – 1980); (one son Dominic and three daughters Thomasina, Nigella and Horatia)
Thérèse Maclear (1980 – to present); (one son Tom and one daughter)

[edit] Global warming debate

In 2005, 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 [1], he also wrote on the same subject in the November 2005 issue of Prospect magazine. Shortly afterwards, the House of Lords Economics Committee of which Lawson was a member, undertook an inquiry into the topic, which produced a report consistent with the arguments of Lawson's letter.

In response, the British government established the Stern Review, an inquiry undertaken by the UK Treasury and headed by Sir Nicholas Stern. The Stern Review found that the potential costs of climate change far exceeded the costs of a program to stabilise the climate.

Lawson's recent lecture published 1 November 2006 Lecture on the Economics and Politics of Climate Change - An Appeal to Reason criticises the Stern Review and proposes what is described as a rational approach to managing changes in global climate.

[edit] References

The Primrose League Gazette (Nov/Dec 1988) carried a front-page article by Nigel Lawson headlined The New Britain.

[edit] External links

Blaby Conservative Association

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Nigel Lawson

Media Offices
Preceded by: Iain MacLeod	Editor of The Spectator 1966 – 1970	Succeeded by: George Gale
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by: (new constituency)	Member of Parliament for Blaby 1974–1992	Succeeded by: Andrew Robathan
Political Offices
Preceded by: Robert Sheldon	Financial Secretary to the Treasury 1979–1983	Succeeded by: Nicholas Ridley
Preceded by: David Howell	Secretary of State for Energy 1981–1983	Succeeded by: Peter Walker
Preceded by: Sir Geoffrey Howe	Chancellor of the Exchequer 1983–1989	Succeeded by: John Major