We need to see many more people starting businesses and becoming their own boss, but the squeezed middle exists as much within this group as in the population at large as rising costs are hitting small businesses - who after all are consumers too.
We are determined to work in partnership with business not only towards our goal of full employment, but for more secure jobs for working people so they can get on and meet their aspirations.
We want to see more sources of alternative finance, from innovations in factoring such as MarketInvoice or in peer-to-peer lending such as Funding Circle which Labour local authorities are now using to support and invest in local businesses.
Political parties - which too often operate like closed circles - must open up.
Though I am probably guilty of indulging in excessive tribalism myself at times, I try to put partisanship to one side where appropriate.
We are a great country with huge potential.
We will not try to out-Ukip Ukip. Labour is not going to offer false solutions, such as leaving Europe.
Ukip has policies including cutting taxes for the wealthy and putting them up for everyone else, charging people to see their GP, or taking away maternity rights.
Labour is the party of internationalism and openness.
We must stop looking to the past and focus on ensuring everyone has a stake in the future.
Screaming 'you're wrong' at the electorate is not a good strategy for a party seeking to win back its trust.
To be clear, aiming to reduce the national debt in the long term and running small surpluses when the economy is operating close to full capacity is what I mean when I talk about seeking to 'balance the books' - a sensible approach.
When a Conservative government is presiding over unfair cuts to tax credits, chaos in the NHS and an unnecessary and ideological attack on trade union rights, it is natural that many in the Labour party should be sceptical of Tory talk on devolution - sceptical, even of government deals with Labour-led local authorities.
This country needs nothing less than wholesale federalisation. The reasons are threefold: economic, democratic and cultural.
We are all proud to be British. But we also feel more local and regional allegiances.
Sometimes it requires national impetus to deliver real change.
Some will say it isn't the government's job to manage who people meet and interact with, but there is clearly a lot it can and should do. It should offer communities much more support to manage demographic and cultural change, including investment in public services and additional housing stock in our migration hotspots.
Daily we see how demographic change and uncertainty about what it means to be British is exploited by those with their own agenda; those who employ divisive rhetoric, engage in scapegoating and do nothing to tackle root causes of the insecurities people face.
I want to make sure that all GPs, not only in my constituency but across the U.K., help to raise awareness of the increased risk of prostate cancer in black men and have the knowledge to initiate these important conversations with the community.
Believe it or not, we all share the same values in the Labour party, but there will always be differences of opinion on policy - that is in the nature of the broad-church political parties we have under our flawed first-past-the-post electoral system.
