The Department for Education and Skills should also consider whether there is scope to realize further efficiency and effectiveness benefits through a child population register.

There are some days when history is made. Yesterday was one - and I was honoured to be in Washington to watch Barack Obama being sworn in. During his soaring inaugural address, the new president gazed over a teeming National Mall that was crowded with more than a million people.

Whatever he does in office, no man can live up to the high expectations of the world, but we have been changed by his election. Obama's inauguration is a historic global achievement, a major milestone in the journey of a powerful nation.

While we are deploying troops in their thousands, we lose the chance to build up their basic skills.

We live in a very uncertain world, and I think that uncertainty of itself generates an environment which we should not make a decision that deprives future generations of the deterrent effect that the nuclear weapons have provided for us and for almost all of my life.

You can't talk about defeating insurgencies in the same way that you can with a conventional army.