Britain should quit European Union - Nigel Lawson

LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron's plan to claw back powers from the European Union is doomed and Britain would be better off leaving the 27-member bloc, former chancellor Nigel Lawson said on Monday.

Lawson, who served as Margaret Thatcher's chancellor from 1983 to 1989, is the most senior member of Cameron's Conservative Party to call for Britain to withdraw from the EU.

Cameron promised in January to renegotiate the terms of Britain's 40-year-old membership of the bloc and to hold an "in-out" referendum if he is re-elected in 2015.

Writing in the Times newspaper on Monday, Lawson said Cameron attempts to claw back powers from Brussels would probably only secure "inconsequential" results.

Lawson said the EU had become a "bureaucratic monstrosity" and Britain's economy would be stronger if it left the bloc after 40 years.

"I strongly suspect that there would be a positive economic advantage to the UK in leaving the single market," Lawson wrote. "In my judgment the economic gains would substantially outweigh the costs."

His intervention piles pressure on Cameron, days after the Conservatives were shaken in local elections by the surging anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP).

(Reporting by Peter Griffiths; Editing by Guy Faulconbridge)

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Nigel Evans quizzed over rape, denies allegations

LONDON (Reuters) - The deputy speaker of the Commons, Nigel Evans, was arrested this weekend on suspicion of rape and sexual assault, but said on Sunday the allegations against him were "completely false".

The 55-year-old member of Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative party was detained on Saturday over attacks allegedly carried out at his home in Lancashire, northern England between July 2009 and March of this year, police said.

After being granted bail, Evans told reporters: "Yesterday I was interviewed by the police concerning two complaints - one of which dates back four years - made by two people who are well known to each other and who until yesterday I had regarded as friends.

"The complaints are completely false and I cannot understand why they have been made, especially as I have continued to socialise with one as recently as last week."

No further details of the complainants have been released by Lancashire police.

Evans, who has been a MP for some 20 years, was elected as one of three deputy speakers three years ago.

The role mainly involves adjudicating the often noisy and fractious debates between Britain's rival parties who face each other across the floor of the Commons.

Evans, who announced to a newspaper in 2010 that he was gay, was vice-chairman of the Conservative party from 1999 to 2001 and shadow Welsh Secretary for two years after that while the Conservatives were in opposition.

(Reporting by Stephen Addison; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

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