Priti Patel

"Capital punishment [could] serve as a deterrent. I do not think we have enough deterrents in this country for criminals – let’s not forget that murders, rapists and criminals of that nature choose to commit the crimes that they commit."

"While my actions were meant with the best of intentions, my actions also fell below the standards of transparency and openness that I have promoted and advocated. I offer a fulsome apology to you and to the government for what has happened and offer my resignation."

"There is still time to go back to Brussels and get a better deal."

"We must seize the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity offered by the end of free movement"

"I want them [criminals] to literally feel terror at the thought of committing offences."

"The Conservative Party is the party of law and order. Full stop. The defence of our nation, defence of our streets and law and order are at the heart of our values."

"Modern policing must of course be visible policing and that means community policing, localised policing and having police visibility that police officers are empowered to do their jobs. For too long we’ve had our police forces, police officers tied up with regulation and bureaucracy. I want them to feel free to get on and do their jobs, I want them to know that we will support them."

"I'm sorry if people feel that there have been failings."

"What happened to these children remains one of the biggest stains on our country’s conscience."

"It's a stronger strain of the virus in the sense that it's more transmittable, it's a bouncy virus."

"[H]ow can a handful of Members of Parliament in a committee, you know, really be that objective in light of some of the individual comments that have been made. I don’t want to name people but, you know, it is a fact, the lack of transparency, the lack of accountability ... I think there is a culture of collusion quite frankly involved here."

"He [Boris Johnson] led the world in supporting Ukraine and defending our values, he got Brexit done, and he secured successes for the Conservative Party not seen since Margaret Thatcher. Boris is a political titan whose legacy will stand the test of time."

"Being a person of colour does not automatically make you an authority on all forms of racism. We write to you as Black Asian and Ethnic Minority Labour MPs to highlight our dismay at the way you used your heritage and experiences of racism to gaslight the very real racism faced by Black people and communities across the UK."

"[In the late 1960s] When I was here as a very young person, people would not have had any problem about saying to your face certain words that we now consider to be offensive. It was much more pervasive, that sort of attitude. You couldn't even get on a bus without somehow encountering something that made you recoil...Things appear to have transformed [but] then we have new rules about detention of refugees and asylum-seekers that are so mean they seem to me to be almost criminal. And these are argued for and protected by the government. This doesn't seem to me to be a big advance to the way earlier people were treated....The curious thing, of course, is the person presiding over this is herself somebody who would have come here, or her parents would have come here, to confront those attitudes themselves."

"["What would he say to her if she were here now?"] I would say, "Maybe a little more compassion might not be a bad thing." But I don’t want to get into a dialogue with Priti Patel, really."

"I felt a creeping anxiety that campaigners are being used, forced to play a bit part in Priti Patel’s nightmare vision of an ever more polarised, ever more angry nation. She proposes a vile policy, so people shout at her. She tries to do something illegal and judges oppose her. She characterises opponents as a mob and we sit down in the road. No wonder some of us feel as if we are being forced to fulfil a direction set by the government. It provides the plot, we are just the reaction shot. The government is pushing those who care about refugees – or about other, no less urgent issues – into a position of permanent protest."