We Liberal Democrats believe in dialogue. We believe in cooperation with both sides of industry and between both sides of industry. And we believe in the language of cooperation. We reject the language of confrontation.

I'm a lifelong believer in trade unionism.

I believe that access to a university education should be based on the ability to learn, not what people can afford. I think there is no more nauseating a sight than politicians pulling up the ladder of opportunity behind them.

We should have high expectations of our children, but politicians should not tell teachers how to meet them.

With 24-hour news... the story moves on with the media.

I don't want a headline saying 'Kennedy suggests this or implies that.'

There are hard choices to be made in balancing the country's security and an individual's liberties. But it is a choice that has to be faced.

For any new leader of any party at any given time it takes time if you are not in government to establish yourself.

I believe that our country is a richer, more vibrant society precisely because it is a multi-racial, multi-ethnic society.

Just as we Liberal Democrats opposed the flawed logic of that war in Iraq - we will oppose the flawed government claim that we have to surrender our fundamental rights in order to improve our security.

The House of Lords has many fine aspects, but at its heart, it is a betrayal of the core democratic principle that those in the enlightened world hold so dear - that those who make the laws of the land should be elected by those who must obey those laws.

Useful lessons can be learned from our more successful local authorities - as you move into government, it is even more imperative to communicate speedily and persuasively with your members and your voters.

The quicker we get rid of the lobby system the better for all of us. I don't think in this day and age it is tenable to have these nods and winks, and on-the-record and off-the-record briefings.

As someone who has led his party through two general elections, I have not always been immune from feeling the pressure of electioneering tactics.

Politicians are good at saying how Government must do more, but we must also think carefully about where Government should do less.

Tony Blair took us to war in Iraq on the basis of the supposed threat of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction.

I happen to consider myself a Highlander even before a Scot; I am proud to be British yet feel comfortable as a European citizen.

Labour politicians for generations have fought to bring democracy to the House of Lords.

Liberal Democracy is all about extending choice. Give people the option to decide their retirement age, and you immediately extend their freedom in a very significant way.

There stands no contradiction between giving voice to legitimate anxiety and at the same time, as and when exchange of fire commences, looking to the rest of the country, as well as all of us in the House, to give full moral support to our forces.

That 1983 general election contained the telltale seeds of eventual Scottish Tory self-destruction.

I listened to the students on campus in Plymouth, worried about their steadily deepening debts and how on earth they would ever escape them.

As a Scot, representing a Scottish constituency for almost the past 25 years, I do not harbour an overweening ambition to pronounce on each and every matter exclusively English.

'Federalism', in the context of political and media usage in Britain, has come to mean the creation and imposition of a European superstate, one centralised in Brussels.