Another priority must be education. In the 2005 election, I stood against John Prescott in East Hull, and in that city I saw how poor education and low aspirations can be part of a terrible negative spiral which destroys the life chances of children and also drives down the local economy, as companies do not stay somewhere if they cannot find the skills they need in the local workforce.

As Chair of Governors of a comprehensive school that has transformed from Satisfactory to Outstanding in just four years, I have seen first-hand how relentlessly focusing on the basics, good discipline and great teaching, drives up standards. We stretch children by making sure that they aim higher than they ever thought they could. A house system, which encourages competition, and teaches children both to win and lose gracefully, is another vital part of helping them to become adults with the resilience to face the ups and downs of life. I have also seen how the red tape and central directives from Whitehall risks paralysing schools by taking away responsibility from head teachers and their staff and leaving everyone trying to second guess the next instruction. The Conservative Party's reforms will liberate schools to focus on what really matters.

Another core belief for me is the need to increase social mobility. My father was the first in his family to go to University, having grown up in a hard-up, hard-working household in the Black Country. He transformed his life through education, but children born into the same circumstances in Britain today have much less chance of doing what he did, because social mobility in Britain is declining. In a global trading system, where we have to compete with other countries, it is more important than ever to ensure that the talents of every child are developed to the full. If we fail to use all the talents that we have, then we will lose out to other countries and will suffer the consequences of declining international competitiveness. Education is at the heart of this, but so are our policies to tackle the causes of social breakdown. At the moment, children who are ‘looked after' by the State are more likely to end up in prison than at university. We urgently need to change this.

Our society is changing rapidly as we are fortunate enough to be living longer. Of course, this creates many challenges, which society has not yet got to grips with. As a councillor I was Deputy Chair for Social Services, and worked on developing a strategy for supporting older people, because with an aging population many of the old models of care for the elderly no longer apply. Most older people want to live as long as possible in their homes, but need support to do that, and need help to stay connected and involved with their local communities. At the same time, there are many more very old and frail people with complex needs who need very intensive and expensive support. The increasing number of people suffering from dementia also creates another range of challenges. I am delighted that we have decided to restore the link between the pension and earnings, but there are so many more things that need to be done to improve the lot of older people, ranging from building more sheltered accommodation to changing society's attitudes to older people.

A national health system is one of the marks of a civilised society, but no health system is perfect. In the NHS, there is room for improvement. Our policies, which will increase the ways in which choice can drive up performance, have the potential to drive some dramatic improvements. As a councillor, I was a founder member of the Health Committee that was responsible for holding the Primary Care Trust and the Hospital Trusts to account, to get them to improve services for local residents. It is clear that the box-ticking culture distorts clinical priorities and leads to the wrong kind of behaviours. We have to change this.

As a member of the Adoption Panel, working with some of the most troubled families in the community, I saw first-hand how the problems of worklessness, poverty, addiction and low aspirations are passed down from one generation to the next. These must be priorities for the next Conservative Government to address.

Although I firmly believe in free trade, a world without trade barriers, I also want a Britain where we can't be held over a barrel by another country that decides to cut off our supplies. Labour has failed to plan for the end of North Sea Oil and we find ourselves without enough gas storage facilities. We must take the action needed to ensure that we have enough energy both the keep the lights on and to do our bit to reduce carbon emissions. That means more gas storage, more nuclear power plants and more renewable energy, particularly using our tides and offshore wind.

Looking at another kind of self-reliance, I want to see us buying more British food, both because it connects us with our land and with each other and also because we know we can trust British farmers to uphold the highest standards.

It is disgraceful that this government has sent our troops off to fight two wars without the right support or equipment. Under Labour, our armed forces have been over-stretched and taken for granted. We must finance our armed forces properly. I believe in a strong Britain that plays a leading role right at the heart of Nato. We can and should be a force for good in this world, and we cannot discharge this duty if our armed forces are underfunded.

As a wife, mother, sister, daughter, neighbour and friend, I believe in strong families and close communities. For decades, while the tentacles of the state have encroached on more and more areas of our lives, people have stood back and waited for the state to solve their problems when so often the answers lie closer to home. There are many local groups that have realised this and many local, enterprising people who have gone ahead and worked out ways to help themselves and the people around them. We must support people to help themselves, and we must make sure that the state doesn't get in people's way, with ridiculous bureaucracy, like that faced by the two policewomen who weren't allowed to babysit each others' children without becoming registered childminders. This sort of nonsense has to stop.

The theory of crime and punishment is simple. When people commit a crime, they should be caught, sentenced and punished. The threat of being punished should deter future crime and keep us all safer. It doesn't seem to work that way. There are so many things in our system that need to be fixed. My psychological training has taught me that not all criminals are equal. We need to separate the people who are really bad from those who are mentally ill or just weak and easily lead. We need tough sentencing and enough long term prison places for the really bad ones, better treatment for those who are mentally ill, drug and alcohol programmes for people who are addicted, and training and rehabilitation programmes for those who show some potential to turn their lives around.