You need to have a state pension that doesn't drag more and more people into means-testing each year and make it very difficult for people on low to medium term incomes to save and not see their savings clawed away.

I believe in public services.

The Conservative Party mustn't sound like the old man on the park bench who says things were better in 1985, or 1955, or 1855.

Well you know I've attracted a lot of criticism by, for example, suggesting that child benefit should be taken away from higher rate taxpaying families.

What I'm interested in is Britain projecting itself abroad, and through that its values and the things it holds dear. And I don't think you do that by refusing to talk to the world's second-largest economy [China]. In fact, that is positively counter-productive in my view.

We have management questions. On increasing the basic state pension in line with earnings, because we have made a clear promise and said that the increase in the pension age has to be brought forward, that is an affordable and deliverable commitment from the Conservative Party.

No other chancellor in the long history of the office has felt the need to pass a law in order to convince people he has the political will to implement his own Budget.