Adopting means opening your home, and heart, to a life you've never known. But there is nothing as richly rewarding as being an adoptive parent.

Children in dysfunctional homes at risk of abuse are kept in danger for too long because politically correct rules mean we won't challenge unfit parents.

My sister and I know our lives could have been different - radically, unthinkably, irretrievably different - if we had not been adopted. We might have found ourselves in homes without love, stability or kindness. We might have found ourselves in care for much longer, without the secure attachment that being cradled in a mother's arms brings.

It's critical that children spend time before they arrive in school in a warm, attractive and inclusive environment, where they can learn through play, master social skills and prepare for formal schooling.

Many more schools can be outstanding.

There is a slam-dunk case for extending foreign language teaching to children aged five. Just as some people have taken a perverse pride in not understanding mathematics, so we have taken a perverse pride in the fact that we do not speak foreign languages, and we just need to speak louder in English.

You know you don't see hospital consultants going on strike, and I don't believe that teachers and head teachers should. It's within their rights, it's a civil right, but I think it is wrong in terms of the reputation of the profession.

I was a union member in my youth as well and I went on strike, and I don't think it solved anything. It only made the situation worse for everyone involved.

I think more and more respect has been accorded to teachers, and quite rightly so.

I'm clear that we do need to improve what's happening in our schools.

What we're doing now is we're saying that individual schools can spend the money on their own priorities, so that head teachers can decide what's truly important, because the big shift in approach on education that we're taking - which is different from what happened before - is that we trust teachers and we trust heads.

Children themselves know they are being cheated. Ultimately we owe it to our children. They are in school for 190 days a year. Every moment they spend learning is precious. If a year goes by and they are not being stretched and excited, that blights their life.

Teachers themselves know if there's a colleague who can't keep control or keep the interest of their class, it affects the whole school.

A coalition with Tories and Liberal Democrats together is a golden opportunity to create the sort of planning reform that means not only can we have more environmentally sensitive planning, but we can have more homes and more schools.

The free market is not a god; we have to do everything we can to make the market competitive.

I prefer to take the view of businesspeople who are actually generating jobs and creating wealth.

I think it's time that we said to people who are incapable of acknowledging that they've ever got anything wrong: 'I'm sorry, you've had your day.' Unelected, unaccountable elites, I'm afraid it's time to say, 'You're fired. We are going to take back control.'

The Government wants to give young people from every community the chance to learn about the heroism and sacrifice of our great-grandparents, which is why we are organising visits to the battlefields of the Western Front.

Unfortunately, the real achievements of children on the ground became debased and devalued because Labor education secretaries sounded like Soviet commissars praising the tractor production figures when we know that those exams were not the rock-solid measures of achievement that children deserve.

I know myself, from my own background, the E.U. depresses employment and destroys jobs. My father had a business destroyed by the common fisheries policy.

Ever since going up to university, I have accumulated new debt, and new means of becoming indebted.

At the moment, I'm afraid that the discipline system doesn't give teachers the support that they need. One thing that I've been struck by is that the number of violent assaults on teachers increased last year. We need to be clear that teachers have the power they need in order to impose discipline.

There aren't many contemporary Christian leaders who are both energetic in their condemnation of the crimes of communism and robust in their analysis of the evil of Islamism, but Justin Welby stands out.

Making promises and then saddling yourself with a political system and a political union that means that you cannot deliver those promises, I fear, doesn't contribute to an atmosphere of trust and confidence in politics.