Investment banking has, in recent years, resembled a casino, and the massive scale of gambling losses has dragged down traditional business and retail lending activities as banks try to rebuild their balance sheets. This was one aspect of modern financial liberalisation that had dire consequences.
The food in the House of Commons is fairly good. The cafe in Portcullis House is really very high quality, and you also have a choice of eating in the more traditional restaurants, the Churchill Room or the Members' Dining Room. I don't often eat in them, though, as I'm usually on the run.
Small- and medium-sized businesses need access to a diverse range of finance options, including non-bank lending. These new forms of finance are still small in scale today but they should, over time, bring additional choice and greater competition to the lending market.
I'm now happily remarried to a good cook, which encourages me to be lazy. I like to think that I'm a new man, but perhaps I'm not. I offset it by doing the ironing, though. She has a small farm in the New Forest with a herd of cattle, so she serves up a steak and kidney pie made with her own beef.
My late wife Olympia was Goan and I've been to India many times. I love the food there. We used to do our shopping in Southall, where you can find cheap but wonderful fruit like mangoes, vegetables and spices. I didn't do much of the cooking, as Olympia did a lot - I was the under-chef and did some of the chopping.
And humility in politics means accepting that one party doesn't have all the answers; recognising that working in partnership is progress not treachery.
When Gordon Brown becomes prime minister, the balance sheet that reflects his economic stewardship could look very sickly indeed. He could become Labour's biggest liability, not its most marketable asset.
When my job was attempting to predict future economic developments for the Shell oil company, I was frequently reminded of an Arabic saying: 'Those who claim to foresee the future are lying, even if by chance they are later proved right.'
I fear that the rising personal bankruptcies and repossessions are the first signs of bigger problems to come and personal debt - Gordon Brown's legacy to millions of Britain's families - will hang like a millstone around the neck of the British people for years to come.
I made friends with a boy who was a communist when I was 13 and that broadened my political views, but it also brought me into conflict with my father who was very Right-wing.
My college, Fitzwilliam, was pretty good but unfashionable and I lived in digs so I was not part of the cloistered 'old college' environment, which frankly was a bit intimidating. But I worked hard and settled in by exploring politics and girls.
I think what is happening is I think first of all there is confidence in the U.K. economy. We're in a German rather than a Greek position in international financial markets, which is very positive and keeps our debt service costs down, and we're also beginning to see real evidence of rebalancing.
Housing associations have fingered the fact that they cannot use their assets as liquidity due to Bank of England rules unlike their continental equivalents. This has emerged to be one of the main bottlenecks to getting investment going in the U.K. It is a Bank of England issue.
I don't feel comfortable with luxury, and I try to stay fairly normal.
Where there is flagrant abuse of corporate entities we must and will seek to tackle it.
My job is to support businesses, that means promoting British commerce in the big emerging markets that have been neglected in the past. It means keeping Britain open to inward investors, trade and skilled workers. It means cutting red tape which is suffocating growing companies which create jobs.
So I went into government with a clear mind about what the problems were, and what needed to be done.
We have sectors of the economy, aerospace is a good example, where Britain's probably the second country in the world, the automobile sector, where we've done extraordinarily well, an enormous amount of investment over the last couple of years, life sciences is another.
Our workforce is very co-operative, very flexible, easy to work with and one of the big selling points. The idea that Britain is still back in the labour market of the '70s is utterly bizarre.
We need a new British business bank with a clean balance sheet and an ability to expand lending rapidly to the manufacturers, exporters and high-growth companies that power our economy. Today I can announce we will have one.
