The gang culture - tragically - has for some young people become the only source of stability in their lives.

The problems of gang crime you find in some parts of the north are little different to the problems you find on the streets of south London.

A short distance away from thriving city centres in virtually all of our cities, you will find areas of endemic worklessness, alienation, crime and antisocial behaviour.

We have to take real steps to break down the culture of benefit dependency and failure which blights too many urban areas.

Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Leeds have successful financial services sectors. There are good universities there which provide great opportunities for local technological innovation. And there are strong multinational and family businesses.

Social immobility is driven by family background, instability in childhood and often by parents who don't know how to give children the right start in life.

On our toughest estates, generations pass with the same experience of worklessness and educational failure.

Britain is a country of glass ceilings.

Few escape our most deprived estates. Few young people with potential escape difficult upbringings. Fewer cross the social divides.

No one would normally accuse me of being soft on crime.

I think that far too often we let those who commit crimes in our society off far too lightly.

People are innocent until they are proven guilty, and we will make sure that stays the case.

Introducing ID cards isn't a matter of great national security importance.

I have met virtually no one in the policing and security world who thinks ID cards are an essential part of what they need to do in the future.

The vast majority of young people in Britain are law-abiding citizens making important contributions to their communities.

The truth is that those who join gangs - more often than not they are young men in their later teens - often do come from the most difficult family backgrounds, from an environment where they feel neglected and unwanted. Gang membership can bring a perverse sense of belonging which they may not have ever got at home.

Whether it is kids carrying knives because they are in gangs or kids carrying knives because they are afraid of gangs, it is the gang culture that underpins the problem.

The root causes of the gang culture lie right across the policy spectrum - but they can all be found in the same areas geographically: worklessness; family breakdown; educational failure and addiction.

We must give individuals the opportunity to show what they are capable of.

The state has no right to cast people aside because they are sick or disabled.

I think it's fair to set limits on housing benefit, so that people on welfare do not end up able to live in better areas than those doing the right thing by finding work.

I think it's fair to set limits, so that people cannot receive more than the equivalent of the national average wage while living on benefits.

When you talk to unemployed young people you hear one thing above all others - if you haven't got experience how can you get a job? But if you don't have a job, how can you get experience?

Prison is not meant to be comfortable. It's not meant to be somewhere anyone would ever want to go back to.

I want to see prisoners getting support that is every bit as good as that which they would receive from the NHS in the community.

We take back control of our laws and Britain will be a proud independent nation again.

European businesses will want to retain free-trade access to the U.K. - their biggest export market.

All too often, ambulance-chasing has been simple fraud. People are encouraged to launch a claim for whiplash when no one has been injured. Phone calls ask you to claim for accidents that never happened.

All too often politicians sign treaties in a hurry, without reading them properly, and without understanding where they will lead.

If the law is wrong, it is for politicians to sort it out.

The Human Rights Convention was written by Conservatives in the aftermath of the Second World War. It was designed to combat the risk of another Holocaust, and to try to stop people being sent to prison camps without trial.

Britain cannot afford to allow a culture of Left-wing-dominated, single-issue activism to hold back our country from investing in infrastructure and new sources of energy and from bringing down the cost of our welfare state.

We need society, and particularly the victims of crime, to believe justice is being done.

The typical prisoner has numerous brushes with the law before finally being sent behind bars. Each year thousands of cautions are issued to people who will come back to crime again.

Police on the street need the discretion to deal quickly and easily with routine misdemeanours which need to be recorded but need not take up court time - and where there is no doubt about guilt.

During the late 1940s, Europe was a pretty bleak place.

It's not good enough to announce 'I know my rights' if you aren't prepared to accept that you have responsibilities to society and your fellow citizens as well. And if people don't live up to those responsibilities to our society, they will not be able to hide behind their rights.

The SNP talks a lot - but they have proved that they cannot deliver.

Scotland is a great country. It's integral to the U.K.

The trouble with the SNP is they want power without responsibility. They do not want to take difficult decisions.

I want to be the Tough Justice Secretary.

I'm very mindful of the need to ensure we have a criminal justice system in which people have confidence.

The railways should be run in the best interest of passengers and, overall, taxpayer's money should be spent improving the network, not subsiding it.

Unlike Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, I am not ideologically obsessed with the structure of our rail network; for me it is a matter of practicality.

Travel costs should not be a barrier to opportunity for our young people.

It is free enterprise and the determination to succeed which generates opportunity and wealth for our society, and in doing so provides the money we need to deliver the high quality public services that we all want.

If you stop investing in a modern road system to give an unaffordable electoral bung to new voters, then the investors who could create great jobs for them will be doing so for the younger generation in another country instead.

An economic strategy built around hiking taxes for business means one thing: fewer jobs.

Visit any of the fastest growing parts of the world and you will find investment in infrastructure.

Britain has always been a nation with a strong global focus. We have influenced change and built strong ties all round the world.