Early Life and Education
Laws was born in Farnham, Surrey, son of a Conservative voting father who was a banker, and a Labour voting mother. He would later joke that he was the "perfect fusion" as a Liberal Democrat. He has an older brother and a younger sister, both adopted.
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.
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