Advances in technology and in our understanding of illness and disease together with an expanded workforce and greater resources will allow us to provide more services to a higher quality.

For too long nurses have been undervalued, restricted in what they could do, with too few career opportunities in clinical practice. For far too long, nurses have endured a pay system that has held them back - both professionally as well as financially.

Our objective must therefore be to ensure EU better regulation contributes towards delivering a modern European Union which relentlessly focuses on building a dynamic and innovative economy equipped to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

But we need to show that the EU can modernise itself, can adapt to the needs of its citizens, can take their views into account. That will be our ambition for the UK Presidency.

Leaving politics was a good thing. I was spared a miserable Tory government where I might have ended up as leader.

Our founders got it right when they wrote in the Declaration of Independence that our rights come from nature and nature's God, not from government.

A lot of times, politics, global issues are very black and white. There is a place for that, but it's also fantastic to have art side by side, from different viewpoints, open for interpretations.

As a young woman in politics, with few women around, you start to subconsciously behave like men in politics. That comes across as quite hard, tough and humorless, but you're trying to be taken seriously.