[6] At the end of the campaign, Michael Foot was challenged by Robin Day in a televised interview to say whether he would back Pat Wall or Ben Ford.
In January 1985 he was one of 70 Conservative MPs to break the whip and vote to reject a planning inspectors' report supporting expansion of Stansted Airport.
[1] After the Bradford City stadium fire, he noted that the death toll would have been much worse had there been a fence in front of the stand to stop pitch invasions.
[13] In July 1986 he owned up to leading a plot among backbench MPs to make sure there were enough present at 1 AM to vote to increase the allowances used to pay for secretaries and researchers by 50%.
[14] As vice-chairman of the Conservative backbench employment committee, he protested against comments by Lord Chief Justice Lord Lane who had called for lower sentences for people found to have committed benefit fraud; Lawler described Lane's comments as "an affront to all law-abiding people who declare their incomes and pay all their taxes, and equally to those who are honest claimants of social security and depend on it for their income".
[2] He noted that being an MP "doesn't give you many additional recognisable skills other than being a good communicator", but since he had previously worked in public relations before his election, he returned to the same field.
[9] A few days after the 2005 general election, Lawler wrote to The Times to remark that the Conservative Party's strategy was "misconceived" and that the negative tone "repelled many people and buried the positive reasons that would attract them to support the Conservatives"; he appeared to blame Lynton Crosby by calling for no more immigration by "election experts from Australia".