David Lammy

A workplace culture where fathers are encouraged to take paternity leave would result in stronger families, a more equal labour market and a better economy.

People don't contest that I'm British as a black man, but they do contest that I'm English. Too many people are going back to an ethnocentric idea of what being English means.

We cannot afford to lose talented young black people, who make it to university, overseas, or worse, to let other talented black people be put off by the notion that university is somehow not for them.

The idea of a family sitting round the kitchen table and carefully planning their future family size based on the certainty of years to come is a complete fantasy. Back in the real world, jobs are lost, livelihoods taken away, families break apart, partners leave or pass away.

Many black youths are defying stereotypes, achieving good academic results, finding employment and contributing to their communities. But helping those who fall behind is not an exercise in political correctness, it is a precisely what a compassionate - and sensible - state should concern itself with.

Like many black men growing up in London, I have been stopped and searched by several policemen. I was 12 years old when I was first groped and frisked by police for walking down the road. It terrified me so much I wet myself.

Dads are not a risk to be managed, but a resource to be used for the benefit of the whole family.

People 'demand' the opportunity to gamble away money they do not have, just like people 'demand' money from loan sharks at extortionate interest rates. This is a warped, empty type of freedom, in which the powerful are free to exploit the vulnerable.

A good society is characterised not just by liberty but by mutual respect and responsibility. When this breaks down it takes a lot more than police officers to put things right.

My father was a taxidermist, not a run-of-the-mill profession for a West Indian immigrant. Having given up on becoming a vet, he settled for working with dead animals rather than live ones. Dad was a true craftsman, an artist.

Ultimately, we must either abandon our reliance on stop and search or abandon any hope for a criminal justice system grounded in equality, impartiality and fairness.

You can't be in business with international development and not understand basic issues of colonialism, postcolonialism and white privilege.

Courts are too distant from the communities they put on trial.

Many single mothers do a heroic job looking after their children, as mine did with us; but as she found, it becomes twice as hard to set boundaries with half the number of parents.

Unemployed people should be treated as potential to be realised, not a problem to be solved.