We want people to have a stake in the British economy so I am in favour of actually encouraging people to have small shareholdings and feel they've got a stake in our economic future.

Our first benchmark is to cut the deficit more quickly to safeguard Britain’s credit rating. I know that we are taking a political gamble to set this up as a measure of success. Protecting the credit rating will not be easy The pace of fiscal consolidation will be co-ordinated with monetary policy. And we will protect Britain's credit rating and international reputation.

I didn't come from a traditional Tory background; it was urban and metropolitan.

We should be looking at putting a limit on the interest that can be charged on things like store cards.You don't want to end up with totally draconian credit controls but you want some common sense. We want cooling-off periods for store cards so people can't take them out and go straight to the counter and buy things.

I think we woefully failed to connect Britain to the growing Chinese economy in the previous decade, and I have sought to remedy that. China is now the sixth biggest trading partner with the UK. We have attracted now the lion's share of Chinese investment that is going into Europe.

Britain should not be forced to make a choice between joining the single currency and leaving the EU, because if we're forced to make that choice we would leave the EU.

China is absolutely one of the biggest players in the world and if Britain wants to be connected to the world it has to be connected to China.