Keir Starmer
Access to our civil courts has been severely restricted by the combination of: the removal of legal aid from some cases based on their type, not their merit; a high financial threshold for the receipt of legal aid in other cases; and a failure to deliver a safety net for vulnerable individuals by the exceptional funding arrangements.Collection: Legal
To state that lethal force should not be used without a proper legal justification is to state the obvious.Collection: Legal
I was a human rights lawyer for 20 years, I believed those values of dignity, equality and non-discrimination were a given. believed the only question in my lifetime would be - how much further do we extend those values? I did not think in my lifetime we'd actually be having an argument about those values.Collection: Equality
Just when we need a strong government, what do we see? Division. Chaos. And failure. No credible plan for Brexit, no solution to prevent a hard border in Ireland and no majority in Parliament for the Chequers proposals.Collection: Government
When I was director of public prosecutions, from 2008 to 2013, I had a first-rate counter-terrorism team, who worked closely with the police and the security and intelligence services to defeat and disrupt terrorism.Collection: Intelligence
Labour's approach is not about what is politically right, it is about what is right for the country.
So if you want a really effective criminal justice strategy, you don't build bigger prisons, you invest money in young kids - and you accept that it's going to take years to work through, but it's a more effective strategy.
Labour's priorities are clear: jobs and the economy must come first; not party interests or ideological fantasies.
Human rights only have meaning if they are universal.
I keep an open mind.
I campaigned to stay in the E.U. I voted to stay in the E.U. and I was very disappointed by the outcome. And if there was another vote I would vote to remain in.
I always say, it's better to be asked why you're leaving, rather than when you're leaving.
If you go into a police station and report a burglary the first question is not: 'Are you telling the truth?' If you are the victim of a sexual offence, very often in the past that has been the first question.
I don't subscribe to the view that people who are better off don't want to live in a more equal society.
The Human Rights Act is a really important constitutional document, it isn't just a villain's charter.
You don't win elections by telling people what you're against. We're very good at listing things we don't much like about what the Tories are doing. But you win elections by telling them what you're for, what you're going to change, what's going to be better.
We cannot allow Brexit to be driven by narrow and divisive Tory ideology.
Defining of the public interest is always very, very difficult.
For far too long, victims' rights have been discussed only in the context of sentencing. Sentencing is very important, but the debate obscures something much more fundamental: most victims have so little faith in our criminal justice system that they do not access it at all.
As we leave the E.U., freedom of movement falls away, because it's an E.U. rule... What we then have to say is, 'What then is on the blank piece of paper that is an immigration policy?'
It's really important we make the case that this is not the country of Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson. That intolerance and hatred and division is not representative of our country.
If the vote that is progressive is split then all that does is open up the path for the Brexit party and allow it to pretend it represents the majority view in this country.
Brexit is so important, it would have been neglect of duty to simply sit it out.
The framework for everything I've done has been human rights. That is about protecting the vulnerable and giving people access to courts where they wouldn't otherwise have access to courts.
I wouldn't characterise myself as a bleeding heart liberal, whatever that is.
My background is not typical of a lawyer or a DPP. My dad was a toolmaker before he retired, so he worked in a factory all his life.
For better or worse, when I was director of public prosecutions I had to deal with every challenge that came up, and come up with an answer. Being in opposition, you're not taking the decisions; you're saying what you would do if you were in power, and that's deeply frustrating.
Part of the reason I moved from law to politics was an increasingly profound belief that how we rebuild after the 2008 crash is going to define us for a generation.
My parents didn't have the opportunities they would have liked, but they didn't complain about that because they thought they were part of a society where the next generation would have those opportunities.
I spent five years prosecuting some of the most dangerous terrorists in this country, so it would be quite difficult for people to pin the charge of being soft on terrorism on me.
I would reject wholeheartedly any notion of a Labour Party that is not committed to returning to power at the first opportunity. Of course that needs to be principled power. But standing on the sidelines looking for the purest ideology is a dereliction of the duty for any Labour member.
It will be increasingly difficult to keep Scotland as a part of the U.K. I hope that doesn't happen, but everyone knows David Cameron has put that at risk.
If you lose your job because there has been an influx of labour from another country, that is a legitimate cause for concern.
If immigration is simply seen as a numbers game, nobody will ever win that debate. The question should be: what is it we want to achieve? What do we expect of those who are arriving? What is the basic deal?
I think most people accept that it is necessary to have some surveillance in a democratic society. I think most people accept that it's important to have limits and clear safeguards on that.
There are potentially many offences that journalists could commit in the course of their business. It would be very unhealthy if you had a situation where a journalist felt that they needed to go to their lawyer before they pursued any lead or asked any question.
Our five-year-old son thinks I ought to work in the local bookshop, and I can see the appeal of that.
I am well aware of different views across my own party and across parliament on pretty well all Brexit issues.
We need to remind ourselves that Europe will be our biggest trading partner for the next several decades and probably beyond, so getting the deal with Europe right should be our primary focus.
There is very, very little chance of bespoke transitional arrangements being negotiated at the same time as the rest of Article 50.
We need a transitional Brexit deal that provides maximum certainty and stability. Labour will deliver it.
Labour has repeatedly emphasised that in order to avoid a cliff edge for our economy there will need to be a time-limited transitional period between our exit from the E.U. and the new lasting relationship we build with our European partners.
By remaining inside a customs union and the single market in a transitional phase we would be certain that goods and services could continue to flow between the E.U. and the U.K. without tariffs, customs checks or additional red tape.
I'm absolutely fine with the rough and tumble of politics.
If you really probe, people are anxious about their job, anxious about their home, their children's future. Obviously it gets translated into things like immigration, but that is nothing new.
We have to make the argument that the only economically sound place to be is within Europe - we have to remember, it's history again, that there are reasons we bound ourselves together as a set of European nations and it all came out of the second world war.
Brexit can be stopped.
You can't meet Labour's tests by failing to provide answers.
We will vote down a blind Brexit. This isn't about frustrating the process. It's about stopping a destructive Tory Brexit. It's about fighting for our values and about fighting for our country.
If you find yourself in a position you would rather was not there, you have to make it work.