Voluntary paid maternity leave: yes; compulsory paid maternity leave: over this Government’s dead body, frankly. It just won’t happen.

What we are determined to do is to take more people from Syria and that war-torn part of the world as a response to this particular crisis, but again I stress we are taking people from camps because the last thing we want to do is to encourage and reward people smuggling.We are taking people from camps and we are taking family groups; our focus will be on family groups, from persecuted minorities.

The quality of government, I suppose, is determined not by what happens, but by how you react to what happens.

We are a very like-minded group, the senior members of this government. The outliers are not very far away from the mainstream.

I've always avoided those sorts of self-assessments because if you give yourself a 10 out of 10 people think you're a big head, if you give yourself a 6 out of 10 they think you're plagued with self-doubt, so I'm just not going to rate myself.

To be sociable, I puffed on a marijuana cigarette, but I didn't inhale...I just hate the idea of drawing smoke into my lungs.

I instinctively try to protect people from filth.