Emily Thornberry

Our courts' decisions do not permeate the public consciousness - we have no equivalent of the Brown v Board of Education ruling which outlawed racial segregation, or of Roe v Wade, which enshrined a woman's right to choose not just into law but into the public imagination as well. ”

This sounds ridiculous, but my political inspiration is not Marx or Engels or ­anything like that. It was my mum. ”

Mum was on benefits for a few years. Then I failed the 11-plus and I went to the secondary modern. And that was hard because the expectations were so low in the school. ”

People don't seem to be safe inside Pentonville, and now it transpires inmates can escape. That is the final straw. If they don't have control of the place, what is the point of it being there? This was built in 1842 and is totally inappropriate for modern needs. ”

The principle behind the Equal Pay Act is that if an individual woman finds a man doing similar work and being paid more she can take her employer to a tribunal and get paid equally and compensated. Sounds simple enough. But in reality this law has been hamstrung by a series of stupid loopholes that have developed over the years. ”

If you've just been sacked from work, with no money coming in and a baby to feed, clothe and keep warm, it's unlikely you'll have a thousand pounds or so to spare. ”

If I had a row with my husband, it's not going to work my saying, 'Right, if you don't do what I want, I'm going to walk out.' It doesn't work on any level. What you do is you go in and you say, 'I have a problem. You have a problem. Let's try and sort this out together.' You don't come to an agreement with people who you're falling out with badly. ”

It has always been the case that people on out-of-work benefits have to apply for more or less any job they can reasonably be expected to take. But the operative word there is 'reasonable,' because a job that's appropriate for a single, able bodied 22-year-old man may very well not be appropriate for a single mum who can't afford childcare. ”

So how helpful has 'Help to Work' actually been? Not very. ”

The most prominent - and by far the most controversial - part of 'Help to Work' essentially forces people to take unpaid work placements as a condition of receiving their benefits. ”