Sometimes it takes a crisis for people to agree that what is obvious and should have been done years ago, can no longer be postponed. We must create a new international financial architecture for the global age.

Britain should be the world's number one center for genetic and stem cell research, building on our world leading regulatory regime in the area.

You need in the long run for stability, for economic growth, for jobs, as well as for financial stability, global economic institutions that make sure that growth to be sustained has to be shared, and are built on the principle that the prosperity of this world is indivisible.

I think people have got to understand when a murder is committed on British soil, when innocent people have been put at risk by the method that murder is committed then we expect authorities in other parts of the world to co-operate.

So another challenge for our generation is to create global institutions that reflect our ideas of fairness and responsibility, not the ideas that were the basis of the last stage of financial development over these recent years.

I believe there is a moral sense and a global ethic that commands attention from people of every religion and every faith, and people of no faith. But I think what's new is that we now have the capacity to communicate instantaneously across frontiers right across the world.

I admired and valued Robin as a colleague and friend and as one of the greatest parliamentarians of our time. His wife Gaynor and his two sons are in our thoughts and prayers.