Quotes from Nigel Lawson

This clutching hold of the E.U. is a sign of a lack of national self-confidence - which is not healthy.

Nothing could be further from the truth than the claim that we have a choice between cutting tax and cutting unemployment, for the two go hand in hand.

She felt Britain should not be so dependent on coal. She was in favour of building up nuclear energy to break the dependence on coal, and the main opposition to nuclear came from the environment movement. Mrs. Thatcher thought she could trap them with the carbon emissions argument.

The Treasury has enough trouble with forecasts even when they are trying to get them right.

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

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

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.

If our system of cabinet government is to work effectively, the prime minister of the day must appoint ministers he or she trusts and then leave them to carry out that policy.

As the resignation letter which I wrote to the Prime Minister clearly implies, it was not the outcome I sought, but it is one that I accept without rancour, despite what might be described as the hard landing involved.

To govern is to choose. To appear to be unable to choose is to appear to be unable to govern.

The heart of the matter is that the very nature of the European Union, and of this country's relationship with it, has fundamentally changed after the coming into being of the European monetary union and the creation of the eurozone, of which - quite rightly - we are not a part.

God forbid that the United Kingdom should take a lead and introduce a sensible tax system of its own which would probably comprise a very low level of corporation tax - tax on corporate profits - and perhaps a low level of corporate sales tax, because sales are where they are, and sales in this country are sales here, which we can tax here.

The right kind of immigrants can benefit the British economy enormously, but no country can accept indiscriminate, unlimited immigration.

A flat-rate poll tax would be politically unsustainable; even with a rebate scheme, the package would have an unacceptable impact on certain types of household.

However useful computer models may be, the one thing they cannot be is evidence. Computer climate models are simply conjectures.

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.

We already have a sabbatical system. It's called opposition, and I've had enough of it.