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 was shocked to see that some of the very wealthiest people in the country have organised their tax affairs, and to be fair it's within the tax laws, so that they were regularly paying virtually no income tax. And I don't think that's right.

Britain has no divine right to be one of the richest countries in the world.

Well British pension funds have not been investing the savings of British people in British infrastructure.

Just as we should never balance the budget on the backs of the poor, so it is an economic delusion to think you can balance it only on the wallets of the rich.

We need to think deeply about whether we can sustain banks that are not only too big to fail, but potentially too big to bail.

Cutting budget deficits can never be just an exercise in economics.