Quotes from Jo Swinson

Being an MP is quite a strange job, because you do it in two different places. Half the time I'm in Westminster and the other half I'm in my constituency and the job is different in both of them.

If you look at the role models that are out there, the women that tend to be photographed tend to be actresses and models, whereas the men are often in the media because of what they do in terms of business and sport.

My childhood was a mix of ballet classes and debating society. I liked arguing. As a teenager, I wanted to be an author. Later on, inspired by Young Enterprise and the Body Shop founder Anita Roddick, I decided I wanted to go into business.

As minister for business and minister for women and equalities, it is clear to me that promoting equality of opportunity simply makes good business sense.

Every January we see these fad diets promoted. These aren't promoting healthiness, these aren't promoting a way of embracing exercise and eating fruit and veg and doing things which will actually help people.

One of the things I love most about Lib Dem members is that for all our policy disagreements, we agree on why we're Lib Dems in the first place.

Publishing parental pay benefits will let employers show that they're family-friendly and enable them to better attract talent, potentially spurring on some very healthy competition.

Since 2016 we've been campaigning to improve the rights of renters, especially those on low incomes who are being ripped off by stratospheric admin fees, which puts them at risk of homelessness.

I have ruled out Coalitions with Brexiteers because it's so fundamentally opposed to our values.

Far from the quick and easy exit that Leave campaigners once promised, Brexit has become mired in its own internal contradictions.

Men want to play a bigger and equal role in raising their children, but as a society we don't support them in that.

To take on the forces of nationalism and populism, we need to rally a liberal movement that offers a positive, alternative vision for the kind of country we want to be.

I'm the leader that can be the rallying point for the liberal movement that we need to create to take on the forces of nationalism and populism, the likes of Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson.

Having a child is difficult enough already, bringing with it a whole range of wonderful challenges, and we shouldn't be trying to guilt parents into 'there is just one way to do it'.

For so many in the UK, the social contract is broken - the idea that if you work hard and play by the rules, you'll reap the rewards. Advances in robotics, artificial intelligence and other technologies are just as capable of fixing the social contract as they are to weaken it further.

Whether it is throwing people under the bus or writing a lie on the side of one: Britain deserves better than Boris Johnson.

While the problems facing the country are huge, it is in times of great disruption that we can make the most important changes to our society and help to rebuild our fractured, broken politics.

I still have a good girl deep inside, but also recognise that it's worth saying things people will disagree with or get annoyed.

We have a massive shortage of engineers and one of the big glaring holes is that we have so few women doing engineering - it's less than 10 per cent of the workforce.

Being transparent about parental leave and pay policies will help build a workplace culture where men also feel supported in taking on their fair share of caring responsibilities.

We will never achieve equality in the workplace until we have more equality in the home. Our plans for an extra four weeks of parental leave specifically for fathers will help tackle the assumption that parenting is one of the 'girl jobs'.

When I was a little girl, about eight, I remember going into the Body Shop - that was my first introduction to campaigning. There would always be a petition at the till about fair-trade or stop testing on animals, and the message was: get involved and make change.

Across society, the lion's share of caring responsibility - whether for children or elderly relatives - still falls on women.

My mum used to send me cuttings from the local paper about people who'd got married as a kind of 'hint hint'. But then there was one cutting about my home seat's boundary changes, and how it might be good for the Liberal Democrats, and I knew this was an opportunity.