In primary schools, I set two main objectives - to cut infant class sizes and improve literacy and numeracy.
— David Blunkett
We need to use all the resources at our disposal in order to prosper. We need more employment, and we need employment to be spread more fairly across society.
People from all over the world were killed in the attacks on the World Trade Centre. They came from many different cultural, ethnic and religious backgrounds. Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Hindu believers were killed together as they worked in the towers.
We must look to an open, tolerant, inclusive England, which embraces the values of a Britain that still leads the world in terms of an open democracy, as well as an understanding of the needs for responsibilities and obligations to run alongside the affirmation of individual rights.
What is it that unites, on the left of British politics, George Orwell, Billy Bragg, Gordon Brown and myself? An understanding that identity and a sense of belonging need to be linked to our commitment to nationhood and a modern form of patriotism.
My job as Labour Home Secretary is to ensure people are prepared to listen to us when we take on our opponents across the political spectrum.
I prefer a positive view of freedom, drawing on another tradition of political thinking that goes all the way back to the ancient Greek polis.
How to strike the right balance between our privacy and our expectation that the state will protect us and facilitate our freedom is one of the most difficult challenges facing us all.
Being a Labour home secretary in the 21st century means fighting a constant battle against both extreme Right and Left.
I'm as keen as the next person to preserve the right to free speech.
To make sense of a world in which rapid change and globalisation create genuine insecurity, we need benchmarks by which we can judge our actions and their long-term impact.
Changes to parliamentary procedure won't transform the lives of the people whom I represent. Decentralising, devolving decision-making and renewing civil society will.
When I first came into parliament, there was, on average, a by-election every three months - due not to MPs bailing out, but because of the death rate.
Without the political parties and the volunteering work of their members day in, day out, we would have a very different sort of politics and society.
We've got to get back to old-fashioned politics that's in touch with the people we seek to represent and to avoid self-inflicted wounds.
Children whose parents return to study do much better at school. Offenders who persist with studies are much less likely to reoffend. The national mental health strategy recognises the important role adult learning can play for people recovering from mental illness.
We need a government which, yes, guarantees basic standards in public services, but which also steps in to protect people's wellbeing as they take part in our consumer democracy - particularly online.
I grew up in one of the most deprived parts of Britain. I know the problems which inner-city children face.
In today's world, learning has become the key to economic prosperity, social cohesion and personal fulfillment. We can no longer afford to educate the few to think, and the many to do.
Where asylum is used as a route to economic migration, it can cause deep resentment in the host community.
I believe Britishness is defined not on ethnic and exclusive grounds but through shared values; our history of tolerance, openness and internationalism; and our commitment to democracy and liberty, to civic duty and the public space.
Parents don't believe that lifting life-chances in one school means reducing them in another.
I didn't come into politics to have to deal with the issue of clandestine entry, illegal working, or an asylum system that allows a free run for right-wing bigots.
Privacy is a right, but as in any democratic society, it is not an absolute right.
Politics is only worthwhile if you are doing what you believe, regardless of the slings and arrows.
The government wants to be able to attack extremism and hatred wherever it occurs.
If surveillance infiltrates our homes and personal relationships, that is a gross breach of our human and civil rights.
As home secretary, I gained a reputation for being 'tough'; less concerned with liberty than with public protection.
It's not just parliament that requires radical modernisation. It's our democratic processes.
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.
Crucially, I'd like to thank Labour party members up and down the country for sticking with us. For their active citizenship, their willingness to engage in our democracy, and for being there at the cutting edge of making our democracy work.
In an ageing society, it makes sense to support older adults to develop new skills, prolonging their working lives.
Businesses that fail to develop their staff are twice as likely to collapse. Firms seeking to reposition themselves for the economic upturn need to invest in their staff's flexibility, responsiveness and skills.
By confirming the importance of politics and politicians in Britain, we can build from the bottom up and begin to reverse the worrying anti-politics trend, which will empower the elite technocrats and leave defenceless the man or woman in the street with a mere vote to cast.
We need dynamic and thriving businesses and a skilled and adaptable labour force to produce competitiveness and prosperity.
The democratic state can sometimes abuse its power as much as those who seek to destroy it abuse fundamental rights and democratic practices.
In the U.K., we have always been an open, trading nation, enriched by our global links. Contemporary patterns of migration extend this tradition.
Solidarity and interdependence, a sense of worth, a pride and hope in the future: these are positive gains for those who believe in progressive politics and the beneficial role of government, rather than a detriment.
For six and a half years, I had responsibility for leading the Labour party policy on education and delivering on our promise of improved opportunities for all our children.
History teaches us that, whatever we say, racists will always distort the words of mainstream politicians to make themselves sound more respectable.
Despite being in public life, I value my own privacy immensely and would be as concerned as anyone else if I thought my mobile phone records could be easily available to officials across government.
Being home secretary involves having to face some of the worst of human behaviour and challenges of modern society.
Much extremist activity falls short of directly inciting people to violence or other crimes and so is not caught by laws on incitement. Neither does the Public Order Act, used to protect groups of people from harassment, deal with the problem.
If, in the name of liberty, we allow individuals to act in a way that damages the wellbeing of the whole, it will inevitably mean the breakdown of mutuality, thereby changing the very nature of our society.
The government must give men and women without power a real say over what happens to them, and the means of engaging in a participative, invigorated and living democracy.
I am totally in favour of reform - but it must be reform that changes the nature of British politics, not simply the makeup or operation of parliament.
To punish MPs because of the distance they live from London - those with fast train journeys quite close to London as well as those at some distance from both the capital or an appropriate airport - is perverse, but also dangerous to democracy.
We must draw on our early roots and remind people why the Labour party was created and who it sought to represent. We have never been a sectional party promoting self-interest, but instead a force for engaging self-reliance and self-determination.
It is a mistake to separate learning for work and for community and personal development.
Politics is about the participation and engagement of the wider citizenry - to miss that point would doom us to irrelevance.
