Nigel Lawson

Politician

87 Quotes

The 'in' campaign will attempt to scare people into believing that if the U.K. were to leave, investment and jobs would move abroad. They are as wrong about that now as they were when they warned that this would happen if we did not sign up to the Euro.

You don't need to be within the single market to trade; it's not an issue.

I don't think the government needs to be frightened of the banks in the slightest.

I have long argued that in the modern world, corporation tax has had its day as a major source of tax revenue.

When differences of view emerge, as they are bound to do from time to time, they should be resolved privately and whenever appropriately, collectively.

One of the things that concerned me was the way the system operated: the wife who went out to work got a full personal allowance, but the wife who was working at home got nothing. This was particularly hard on wives who gave up work for a time to bring up children.

Britain's destiny lies in Europe.

If you punish the banks, all you are doing is reducing the banks' capital, which you want to increase, and punishing shareholders, who have done nothing wrong.

We should be forced to give so many exemptions and concessions (inevitably to the benefit of high spending authorities in Inner London) that the flat-rate poll tax would rapidly become a surrogate income tax.

You don't need to be within the single market to trade; it's not an issue.

There is always, of course, a limit in a democracy as to what is politically possible, so you have to respect that limit. But in my experience, governments tend to be too timid.

You have got to clear up that corporation tax in the modern way has had its day as a major source of revenue, and we have got to find a new system.

In terms of the arguments, I think the pro-Leave campaign is winning them all.

Raising the personal allowance is massively expensive. For the same amount of money, you could look at reducing the rate of tax.

I'm sure Mark Carney is a very clever young man, but I think that the government would be mad to move from inflation targeting to money GDP targeting.

It would be wholly wrong constitutionally for the unelected House of Lords to do anything, to kill anything of a financial nature that has been through the House of Commons not once but twice.

Prime Minister Cameron says he wants to be the greenest government ever, but the definition of green is immature... I don't deny for a moment that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but there are so many other factors that affect climate. It is more complicated than the computer models that we are using. What the truth is, nobody knows.

No one, however long they have held the post, lightly gives up the great office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. Certainly I did not.

I have to say to the Government that you are not even getting nowhere fast - you are getting nowhere slowly.

I strongly suspect that there would be a positive economic advantage to the U.K. in leaving the single market.

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