We have to be pretty tough with mortgage companies and say you have got to give people the chance to work out their debts, sort out future mortgages.

I understand the damage the expenses crisis has done to Parliament, and the paramount importance of restoring trust in our politics.

We can help people. We have got to move this economy from its over-dependence on debt. People should have manageable debts, a manageable mortgage.

I'm fed up with Britain being condemned to this future where we borrow the Chinese in order to buy from the Chinese the things that they make for us.

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.

Britain is not part of the single currency. That is a decision we have taken, a voluntary decision of this country, but as a result are part of a European Union 19 of whose members are rapidly integrating, creating political, fiscal, monetary, economic union to make their currency work. And that is increasingly rubbing up against the operation.

If we don't get a grip on government spending, there will be no growth.