My immediate instinct when faced with the questions from The Mail on Sunday ten days ago was to protect my family’s privacy and particularly my son in his first term at university, living away from home.

All the research shows that investing in women is a good investment.

You can sing anything you like -- When I'm 64.

You can't please people who don't really know you and, you know, I do think that one of the things I do want to do is please the people who matter to me and please the people that do know me.

If I want to make political decisions, I should stand for election. If I want to do something in the legal field, that's different; that is my - they are my qualifications, but you know, the politicians are the ones who stand up there and are answerable to the people.

In my youngest days, the nuns at my grammar school drummed into us that we were in this world to make it a better place - not just for ourselves, but for other people, too. So from the very beginning, I've been driven by this idea that we have to make a difference, and it's one of the reasons I went into law in the first place.

I had no idea he had been in jail in more than one country, including in this country.

Indeed, in a world of the BlackBerry, remote access and Wi-Fi hotspots on every street corner, it feels particularly outdated that much of our working culture is still dominated by the need to be at our desk for long hours of the day.

They want a Beatles song, people want us to sing, they want me to sing?

It's not good enough to believe women matter if they only matter in the U.K. They have to matter everywhere. As long as there's an idea that women don't matter in the world, then all women are diminished.