Patricia Hewitt Quotes

I have very real concerns about the civil liberties implications of ultimately requiring every resident to submit themselves for compulsory fingerprinting or some other biometric test.

A modern health and social care system has to be completely focussed on the needs of its users.

And some of what we're doing in Government even now, some of the welfare reform programs that are helping lone mothers come into work are based on things that were very new under the Labour Government in the eighties.

We just have to be crystal clear that if we were to abandon all the reforms made over some very painful years in the Labour party, we would be consigned back to opposition.

People are not perfect... very often the relationships that are strongest are those where people have worked through big crises, but they've had to work through them. So the challenge to us is to work through that.

And I hope very much that the ALP will become increasingly engaged in the international discussions that are taking place amongst centre-left parties generally.

Certainly we know from our own experience how very difficult it is when you've lost an election that perhaps a lot of people were expecting you to win.

But clearly at the same time you've got to get out there and connect with voters and actually respond to the needs, the frustrations, whatever problems their now saying are not being adequately solved.

As patients and consumers, we are better informed today about our health care than any previous generation.

The accusation that we've lost our soul resonates with a very modern concern about authenticity.

Business leaders must not cling to old ways of doing business, or allow inertia or complacency to prevent them from making the decisions that they will eventually be forced to make.

And it seems to me in that experience may lie at least some of the clues for policy development perhaps constitutional changes as well that Labour will need to make at the national level too.

I think he was absolutely right not to go to UN last week... First things first - that is, values and people here in their local communities, and remembering all politics is local, and trusting people more.

Fifty per cent of the public doesn't know what 'fifty per cent' means.

You don't repair that relationship by sitting down and talking about trust or making promises. Actually, what rebuilds it is living it and doing things differently - and I think that is what is going to make the difference.

You've got to respond to that and of course thinking through the role of a left party in the modern world, in the modern economy and society and having a policy response to that.