Quotes By Diane Abbott

When fast food is not a treat but a dietary staple, the children surf the internet all day in dark corners of the room and are bombarded with latest gadgets. Things replace parental standards.

I'm a West Indian mum and West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children.

My forebears refused to cut the sugar cane for plantation owners, and I am recognisably a product of that background.

It's very lonely bringing up a child on your own.

In politics, the people I most despise are those who have no values.

I knew what could happen to my son if he was sent to the wrong school and got in with the wrong crowd.

My mother liked Jim Reeves. I hated his records. He was unbearable.

Outsiders often have an insight that an insider doesn't quite have.

I want to write a best-selling book.

Families are struggling against a tide of junk information on junk food.

Finally, there's a sense in which I look at this Westminster village and London intelligentsia as an outsider.

Tackling childhood obesity is key.

You learn from mistakes.

I don't think you can have pain and soul-searching doing the right thing for your child.

I spend a lot of time visiting local organisations.

I'm not the only Labour MP who sent their child to public school but I'm the only one who's questioned about it.

You can't defend the indefensible - anything you say sounds self-serving and hypocritical.

I'm not thick-skinned at all, and of course I'm hurt by people attacking me as a person.

Mental health is often missing from public health debates even though it's critical to wellbeing.

Gun crime is a major cause of fear and distress throughout the UK. The problem is deeply entrenched in a wide range of social and cultural factors and therefore not an isolated issue.

I believe every abortion is a tragedy.

In Parliament we debate on and we decide the laws that are going to govern the country.

I was a postman one Christmas and I developed a morbid fear of dogs.

Because when you watch U.S. television, all the presenters and reporters, they're all out of central casting.

My London constituency in Hackney has one of the highest levels of gun crime in the country. But the problem is no longer confined to inner city areas. Gun crime has spread to communities all over Britain.

My family were from Jamaica.

I wanted my marriage to work, but it didn't.

My father was a manual worker.

The honest truth is that if this government were to propose the massacre of the first-born, it would still have no difficulty in getting it through the Commons.

Abortion is an issue of conscience for the Labour party.