Grant Shapps

When eco-towns were first announced we said that we would support environmentally-friendly development where local communities supported the home-building; where infrastructure was in place and where the growth was genuinely green.

Before I went into parliament I used to write business publications, and like many authors wrote under a business name.

I think he would care if you were a good person, if indeed there is a god.

We are the workers' party. We are the party of the hard working individual.

Most people don't get the chance to do whatever their dream in life was. I have ended up doing exactly what I wanted to do and it has been more enjoyable, challenging, stretching and fulfilling than I would have dared to imagine.

I have always been an aviation nerd. I read the magazines.

I think it is absolutely inevitable that Palestinians will, and have to, have their own state.

I suspect I have a relationship with my religion which will seem slightly weird to people who don't understand me.

I like being Jewish and I married a Jewish girl. It's like a way of life and it's good to be able to instil some of that sense of being in your kids. All of that makes me seem as though I am quite observant but actually the flipside of this is I don't know if there is a God or not.

I always think there's some value in saying no with a smile.

I've always been tenacious. I don't let go of things until I think it's fixed. On the other hand I'm a fairly jovial, smiley person.

Chemo is properly punishing, and it's hard to do things at the usual level.

I went to Manchester poly for two years.

Conservatives don't love business for some abstract reason. We love it because of what it offers our children. Hope.

Incentives and infrastructure should encourage development and that development needs to contain the right types of housing in the right places.

We know that solving homelessness has to be about more than simply introducing a new raft of government initiatives, task forces and top-down solutions.

We believe that a civilised society can be measured by the way in which it treats its most vulnerable members and that being impatient about poverty is therefore simply the default position for modern progressive Conservatives.

Fighting poverty is nothing new for the Conservative Party, but during the 1980s the emphasis placed on individualism and prosperity was sometimes seen to crowd out social issues like helping the most vulnerable in society.

There should be a way of saying to people 'thank you very much, it has not worked out but here is a good decent package for you to move on from this role and we will support you to move on into other jobs, so it is not a hire and fire thing'; and those are the sorts of changes that Conservatives would like to see.

I believe that overall if you want a growing economy what you have got to have is sufficient flexibility to allow that to happen.

Of course homelessness has many causes and the solutions are often frustratingly complex.

If there is a moment when it is possible to intervene in the chaotic life of a homeless person, it is when they turn up as an NHS patient.

I've always thought that the level of homelessness in society is likely to be a truer measure of how civilised we are then almost any other factor.

I have probably become a lot more Zionist than I used to be. Jews have a history of being persecuted over a long, long period of time so I think it is absolutely right to have a country that is a Jewish state.

Businesses create every penny of the wealth we need to pay for our nation's schools, our NHS and our pensions. They are our only path to prosperity.

Gordon Brown doesn't often spring surprises. He's usually far too cautious to deliver the unexpected.

Business can be hard. But we need more of it.

When I was starting a small printing shop in Wembley, I vividly remember coming out of the cinema, realising I had spent the two hours worrying about that month's payroll, rather than focusing on the film.

The idea that squatting in some way offers a reasonable solution to the issue of homelessness is both false and cruel.

None of us want to live in a society where people are forced to sleep in shop doorways, on park benches or in dangerous, run-down buildings.

Our reasons for criminalising squatting are crystal clear - we want to protect the rights of regular hard-working homeowners against the damage squatters can inflict on their homes, and the distress this causes in their lives.

An astonishing disengagement from reality is necessary to actually believe there is something sinister about protecting people's homes from invasion through squatting.

When Welwyn Garden City was planned, the workers homes were placed in the east, downwind from the factories in the middle, whilst the bosses got the larger westside homes in Handside. This sort of social engineering, including the absence of a pub, would not be acceptable today.

Representing the people of Welwyn Garden City makes me intensely proud.

While we recognise the challenges councils are facing, we do expect to see them match our commitment to the most vulnerable.

As the people at the sharp end of delivering the government's commitment to tackle climate change we know attaining zero carbon status has always involved a flexible approach.

All too often affordable housing can be a block on mobility and aspiration, so instead Conservatives will ensure that living in social accommodation means that you'll get a 'freedom pass' to get on and do more with your life.

By scrapping the government's centrally dictated density targets we'll ensure that the right type of new homes are built where they're needed, ending the glut of one- and two-bedroom flats.

My personal interest in IVF led me to author two reports into the availability of treatment on the NHS.

It's vital that communities actually get something back in return for seeing their area developed.

Extra homes require additional services and councils have to pick up the tab.

Incredibly, a typical town hall official spends 85% of their time satisfying ministers in Whitehall and a puny 15% of the day for local residents. We believe that this relationship is upside down.

There is a dangerous chasm between what those seeking election claim they could do in office and the stark reality that once in power the real decision-making has long since been sub-contracted elsewhere.

For anyone who has found it easy to conceive, it is perhaps hard to imagine how IVF can become all-encompassing in someone's life. The endless check-ups, scans, tests, periods of waiting and finally the day when you learn the result. It's a physically punishing process for the women and an emotionally exhausting process for both partners.

IVF became the only way for us to have children after I was treated for Hodgkin's lymphoma 10 years ago with fertility-destroying chemotherapy. And while the cancer treatment was predictably punishing for me, I was struck by the anguish of the IVF process and in particularly the failed cycle.

The reality is that it would be wiser and even kinder for politicians to be responsible about what they claim the NHS will do, because the pain of having raised expectations for parents who are desperate to start a family, only to see those hopes crushed, is more cruel than having said nothing at all.

To reduce repossessions caused by unemployment, Gordon Brown needs to look at cutting the rate of corporation tax for small companies to 20 per cent and the main rate to 25 per cent, while reducing the rate of employers' national insurance by 1% for the smallest companies.

My wife and I set up the business, we were always very open about it and had a business author's name as many authors do.

The arts and crafts architecture of Letchworth and Welwyn Garden City is now hugely admired. Remember much of it was stimulated through open competition.

Throughout the ages it has always been possible to point to good and bad architecture.