Labour voted to increase welfare spending again and again, without considering the effect that the spending was having, either on the people it was designed to help or those working to support the system.

MPs are only elected thanks to the help of ordinary members - activists on the ground who traipse the streets, post leaflets and engage in millions of doorstep conversations, come rain or shine and without pay.

I absolutely believe that we're the workers' party. We are the party that has always been at the forefront of the big social changes that have promoted women and working people.

My personal interest in IVF led me to author two reports into the availability of treatment on the NHS.

It's almost impossible to get the outside world to take any notice of homelessness at all.

The arts and crafts architecture of Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City is now hugely admired. Remember much of it was stimulated through open competition.

When eco-towns were first announced we said that we would support environmentally-friendly development where local communities supported the home-building; where infrastructure was in place and where the growth was genuinely green.

I always think there's some value in saying no with a smile.

Incredibly, a typical town hall official spends 85% of their time satisfying ministers in Whitehall and a puny 15% of the day for local residents. We believe that this relationship is upside down.

Conservatives don't love business for some abstract reason. We love it because of what it offers our children. Hope.

To reduce repossessions caused by unemployment, Gordon Brown needs to look at cutting the rate of corporation tax for small companies to 20 per cent and the main rate to 25 per cent, while reducing the rate of employers' national insurance by 1% for the smallest companies.

We believe that a civilised society can be measured by the way in which it treats its most vulnerable members and that being impatient about poverty is therefore simply the default position for modern progressive Conservatives.

When Welwyn Garden City was planned, the workers homes were placed in the east, downwind from the factories in the middle, whilst the bosses got the larger westside homes in Handside. This sort of social engineering, including the absence of a pub, would not be acceptable today.

IVF became the only way for us to have children after I was treated for Hodgkin's lymphoma 10 years ago with fertility-destroying chemotherapy. And while the cancer treatment was predictably punishing for me, I was struck by the anguish of the IVF process and in particularly the failed cycle.

We know that solving homelessness has to be about more than simply introducing a new raft of government initiatives, task forces and top-down solutions.

What matters to every family in the country is that the cost of living is controlled.

I am a social liberal.

It's not enough to tackle just the symptoms of poverty. You have to tackle the causes of poverty.

Margaret Thatcher's government redistributed money from rich to poor. And that's the nature of a modern western democracy.

I think people who sit around and are always yearning for the next thing are not always the happiest people.

I've always thought that good politics follows from good economics and good policies.

The Conservative party absolutely must not allow itself to be shut out of parts of the north of England.

We need strength and success elsewhere in our country - not by pulling London down but by building the rest of the country up.

Britain is an open and tolerant country, and I will fight with everything I have to keep it so.