...the world needs to face up to the challenge of climate change, and to do so now. It is clear that climate change poses an urgent challenge, not only a challenge that threatens the environment but also international peace and security, prosperity and development. And as the Stern report showed, the economic effects of climate change on this scale cannot be ignored, but the costs can be limited if we act early

To be a teacher you must be a prophet - because you are trying to prepare people for a world thirty to fifty years into the future.

I think that's a bit unfair. I'm a father with a 2-year-old child and I feel pretty young, actually.

Each year India and China produce four million graduates compared with just over 250,000 in Britain.

In the weeks and months ahead, my task is to show I have the new ideas, the vision and the experience to earn the trust of the British people.

I'm a great supporter of the European Union. I didn't support entry to the Euro, not because I'm against it in principle but because I didn't think it was economically right for Britain. But that doesn't make me any less pro-European.

Britain was set to repeat the boom-bust cycle that led to 15 per cent. interest rates for one whole year in the early 1990s.