Quote

I think a good MP is someone who cares for their community and becomes their champion, which is why I will make my home in any seat I am lucky enough to be selected for. Looks play no part in the equation, what matters is your ideas and connecting them to the electorate.

It was a bit of a surprise when I became a Tory MP. My friends said it was a stupid idea.

Being an MP is not a desperately hard life, like going down the pit or working in the steelworks - with which I am all too familiar, having been brought up in the city of Sheffield; and it certainly isn't badly paid compared with any of my constituents.

I think you've got to like people. There are MPs who are either painfully shy or who don't like public speaking or don't socialise very well, and you just think this must be the worst job in the world for them.

The duty of responsibility placed on any MP is one of the greatest honours that can be bestowed and I for one don't believe the Conservative Party would abuse that trust by selecting someone who did not have the goods to do the job, just for the sake of media coverage.

People innately have lots of solutions. It sounds like an obvious thing, but everyone thinks that they can be prime minister; everyone thinks that they can do a better job.

I do love the idea of being able to take an MP to court for lying. There are ways and means of taking an MP to court just now, but it is very difficult.

We have a media that presents every politician as being as bad as the next. There is no distinguishing between one good idea or another; no explanation of why constitutional change should be uppermost in the minds of the people I represent.

Any MP has to have a proper family life, they have to have support of their partner.

I think the truth is always interesting, but with politicians, you don't get to see much of that.