I do not believe the picture that some people paint of Scottish towns dependent on welfare. Every time I come here, I meet people who are determined to get into work. Who, with the right help are desp...
When families are strong and stable, so are children - showing higher levels of wellbeing and more positive outcomes. But when things go wrong - either through family breakdown or a damaged parental r...
Getting a family into work, supporting strong relationships, getting parents off drugs and out of debt - all this can do more for a child's well-being than any amount of money in out-of-work benefits.
We do not celebrate people who have made success out of serious hard work.
Do not underestimate the determination of a quiet man.
A system that was originally designed to support the poorest in society is now trapping them in the very condition it was supposed to alleviate.
My view is pensioners don't have the one option that people of working age have. They can't really increase their income, because they are no longer able to work.
Luck is great, but most of life is hard work.
Work is transformative. It gives you a greater chance of a greater income. You can affect your life while you're of working age, so you have scope and opportunity. Pensioners do not.
We have to challenge the whole idea that it's acceptable for a society like Britain to have such a significant number of people who do not work one day of the week and don't have any possibility of im...
If you look at the footballers, you look at our celebrity culture, we seem to be saying, 'This is the way you want to be'. We seem to be a society that celebrates all the wrong people.
The financial costs of family breakdown are incredibly high.
There are few more powerful tools for promoting stability than the institution of marriage.
Kids are meant to believe that their stepping stone to massive money is 'The X Factor.'
Well football teams are perhaps easier to control than political parties, I'm sure the Prime Minister would agree with me, but yeah I think every team needs discipline and a sense of self-belief and t...
All too often, government's response to social breakdown has been a classic case of 'patching' - a case of handing money out, containing problems and limiting the damage but, in doing so, supporting -...
The future of Conservatism lies in our beliefs and values, not by throwing them away. We need to shed associations that bind us to past failures, but hold faith with those things that make us Conserva...
No one out there is interested in who did what to whom in Westminster politics.
When the news is good, the BBC view is: 'Get the government out of the picture quickly, don't allow them to say anything about it.' When the news is bad: 'Let's all dump on the government.'
By measuring the proportion of children living with the same parents from birth and whether their parents report a good quality relationship we are driving home the message that social programmes shou...