One of the best ways to make growth personal is to give employees a share in their firm, a real incentive to go the extra mile, more of a 'John Lewis Economy' if you like...We know that firms where employees are engaged and own a stake do at least as well as other companies in the good times and have performed even better in recent bad times. Expanding and recruiting at a much faster rate and achieving better productivity...So, why do they make up just 2% of our business landscape?

I have got instincts that, I think, are very much in tune with people's very keen sense to see something different. I did not dream of being in politics since I was knee-high to a grasshopper. I was not involved in student politics, or not in that partisan way.

Actually, the curious thing is that the more you become a subject of admiration or loathing, the more you're examined under a microscope, the distance seems to open up between who you really are and the portrayals that people impose on you.

The Liberal Democrat Party and the Conservative Party come at things very differently when it comes to Europe. When it comes to political reform, we have a much greater tradition in the Liberal Democrats of social justice and fairness than the Conservatives do.

I'm very lucky. I am one of those people who is able to go home, shut the front door and completely focus on the kids.

I work in lockstep, hand in glove, with the prime minister on these issues, and as we are supportive to the Eurozone so they can sort their problems out, in return they introduce safeguards to ensure precisely what I said: that the single market is not fragmented and that important industries like the financial services industry are treated fairly. Not exceptional treatment, but are just simply treated fairly, on a level playing field within Europe.

One thing I've very quickly learned is that if you wake up every morning worrying about what's in the press, you would go completely and utterly potty.