Quotes from Dawn Foster

Cooking requires time, effort and fuel: increasing numbers of people I've visited can't even afford to turn on the kettle for a cup of tea as they eke out every penny to feed their extortionate gas and electric meters.

Decades of anti-migrant rhetoric in parliament and the press has resulted in few voters having realistic ideas of the genuine level of migration, on both a national level and in their local community.

Making it compulsory to show identification before voting risks compromising a basic human right by creating further barriers for people who may no longer have an acceptable form of ID, thanks to the often unpredictable and chaotic lifestyle homelessness can cause.

I want to know when my friends need help, as well as when they're happy; when they're vulnerable, as well as when they feel strong.

Poverty is a trap: it should be eradicated. It's no real answer just lifting a few children from families stuck on low wages into a different social milieu.

As austerity has drained the blood from public services, preventive services have been the first to suffer.

Standing in mass on Sundays with 500 other people, shaking hands with the people around you, catching the eye of small children, entertaining the prospect of causing a scene, to make them laugh, is an opportunity to feel part of something bigger than yourself, and rooted in your community.

I'd no more listen to a physicist's advice on my fertility than I would let a mechanic cut my hair.

Hospitals are often grim places: being stuck on a ward is excruciatingly boring, especially when you're too ill to follow the plot of a book, and struggling to sleep through the guttural cries of people writhing in agony in adjacent beds.

It's rare for news of even the most geriatric male celebrity becoming a father to warrant several paragraphs of panicked speculation about a 'growing trend' of older parents.

In one of my secondary schools, the single kindest thing I remember was a teacher who quietly offered to wash the uniform of a friend who was being hounded by children saying he 'stank': his mother was unemployed and couldn't always afford to take his clothes to the launderette.

The mental baggage involved in attempting to feed yourself when poor is immense. Being able to go into a supermarket and buy what you both need and want is incredibly freeing, but it's a luxury not appreciated by anyone who hasn't experienced longterm hardship.

Supporting people to stay in their homes is surely a better method of reducing homelessness than acting after the fact.

Children are more perceptive than we give them credit for: the poorest kids know their place as surely as the wealthiest children are aware of their station.

Women, when they do break into power or succeed, can expect to have their lives scrutinised for clues to how they managed it exactly because these women are, alas, still exceptions to the rule.

Any attempt to redress the inequities and injustices that plague our society has to start with the reality that we will never live in a genuine meritocracy as long as the wealthy are able to protect their own interests.

The best books I read as a child were set in far-flung places, but also portrayed characters experiencing a life far removed from my own.

Towards the tail end of primary school, I was pulled aside by my headteacher and told I was joining a scheme for 'gifted and talented' children, that would run from my 10th birthday until I was 16.

Conservatives have always embraced the idea of grammar schools - that giving a top tier education to bright children from working class backgrounds provides them with the opportunities their middle class counterparts take for granted.

If you're in a meeting and a man talks loudly over you, rather than copying that behaviour and normalising it, what you could do is say 'Can everybody stop doing this and instead put up a hand when we talk?'

Every rough sleeper is the product of political decisions that have created a safety net riddled with gaping holes. No one wants to sleep outdoors in sub-zero temperatures, but far too many will, while politicians continue to cut welfare provision and bludgeon councils with austeritymeasures.

If Theresa May is a white woman who is very well-educated and very wealthy, she's more likely to act in the interests of, say, a very wealthy white man than she is a working class poor black or immigrant woman.

The majority of us don't do what's best for us all the time because life is complicated and busy - and creating excuses is so much easier than getting on with the business of wellbeing.

Focusing only on street homelessness is resource-intensive, and acts after the rough sleeper has already endured significant hardship and trauma. Acting before people are homeless makes far more sense, economically and for the long-term wellbeing of a household.