David Laws

David Anthony Laws (born 30 November 1965) is a British politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Yeovil from 2001 to 2015.

Laws was educated at fee-paying independent schools: Woburn Hill School in the town of Weybridge, Surrey, from 1974 to 1979; and St George's College, Weybridge, a Roman Catholic day school in the same town, from 1979 to 1984.

Regarded as a skilled speaker in intellectual argument, he won the national Observer Schools Mace Debating Championship in 1984.

Laws graduated in 1987 from King's College, Cambridge, with a double first in economics.

Laws went into investment banking, becoming a Vice President at JP Morgan from 1987 to 1992 and then a Managing Director, being the Head of US Dollar and Sterling Treasuries at Barclays de Zoete Wedd.

He left in 1994, to take up the role of economic adviser to the Liberal Democrats, on a salary of £15,000.

He unsuccessfully contested Folkestone and Hythe in 1997 against Home Secretary Michael Howard (Conservative).

From 1997 to 1999 he was the Liberal Democrats' Director of Policy and Research.

Following the 1999 Scottish Parliament election, Laws played a leading advisory role in the negotiation of the Scottish Parliament coalition agreement with Labour, being the party's Policy Director.

Laws had joined the Liberal Democrat back office at the same time as Nick Clegg while the party was led by Paddy Ashdown.

When Ashdown resigned the leadership of the party and then decided to stand down as an MP, Laws was selected for his seat.

Both would walk the constituency in what former Royal Marine Ashdown described as mufti attire; but on election day, Laws wore tailored suits.

In 2001, he was elected as MP for Yeovil, succeeding former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown.

After his election to parliament, Laws became a member of the Treasury Committee, and he was appointed the party's deputy Defence spokesman in November 2001.

In 2002, he became his party's Treasury spokesman and issued an alternative spending review.

In 2004, he co-edited The Orange Book: Reclaiming Liberalism, followed by Britain After Blair in 2006.

He was the co-editor of the Orange Book, published in 2004 in so doing creating the term Orange Book liberalism.

In 2005, he was appointed the Liberal Democrats' Work and Pensions spokesman, a position in which he was critical of the government's handling of the Child Support Agency and flaws in the tax credits system.

He was subsequently the Liberal Democrat spokesman on Children, Schools and Families.

He wrote a lesser-selling book in 2006, Britain After Blair.

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne offered Laws a seat in the Conservative Shadow Cabinet, but was rebuffed, with Laws saying "I am not a Tory, and if I merely wanted a fast track to a top job, I would have acted on this instinct a long time ago."

Following the resignation of Sir Menzies Campbell on 15 October 2007, Laws announced that he would not be a candidate for the leadership of the party.

A member of the Liberal Democrats, in his third parliament he served at the outset as a Cabinet Minister, in 2010, as Chief Secretary to the Treasury; as well as later concurrently as Minister of State for Schools and Minister Assisting the Deputy Prime Minister – an office where he worked cross-departmentally on implementing the coalition agreement in policies - from 2012 to 2015.

After a career in investment banking, Laws became an economic adviser and later Director of Policy and Research for his party.

After the 2010 general election, Laws was a senior party negotiator in the coalition agreement which underpinned the party's parliamentary five-year coalition government with the Conservative Party.

He held the office of Chief Secretary to the Treasury for 17 days before resigning owing to the disclosure of his parliamentary expenses claims, described by the Parliamentary Standards and Privileges Committee as "a series of serious breaches of the rules, over a considerable period of time", albeit unintended; the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards found "no evidence that [he] made his claims with the intention of benefiting himself or his partner in conscious breach of the rules."

His was among the six cabinet resignations during the expenses scandal; he was suspended from Parliament for seven days by vote of the House of Commons.

Following the 2010 general election, Laws was one of four negotiators for the Liberal Democrats who negotiated a deal to go into a governing coalition with the Conservatives.

His account of the coalition's formation was published in November 2010 as 22 Days in May.

Laws was one of five Liberal Democrats to obtain Cabinet positions when the coalition was formed, becoming Chief Secretary to the Treasury, tasked with cutting spending and increasing tax take without increasing rates of taxation to eliminate the national deficit.

He was appointed as a Privy Counsellor on 13 May 2010.

Laws's predecessor Liam Byrne, wrote a note to his successor as Chief Secretary to the Treasury which read "Dear Chief Secretary, I'm afraid there is no money. Kind regards - and good luck! Liam".

Byrne said the letter was meant as a private joke but Laws published it, slightly misquoting it (from memory) at a press briefing as "I'm afraid to tell you there's no money left".

Outlining spending cuts in May 2010, Laws said Child Trust Fund payments would be axed by January 2011.

In the 2012 cabinet reshuffle, he attended cabinet as Minister of State for School Standards and Minister Assisting the Deputy Prime Minister.

Looking back in 2013 he said that he had thought the note was a joke but that he felt it was in poor taste given the poor state of the economy.

He had not expected the revelation of the contents of the note to be taken as significantly as it was.

He was unseated by Conservative nominee Marcus Fysh in the 2015 general election.

Laws was born in Farnham, Surrey, son of a Conservative-voting father who was a banker, and a Labour-voting mother.

He has an older brother and a younger sister, both adopted.