My job is to help parents give their children the best start in life.
Sam Gyimah
Born in the UK, brought up in Ghana, it was a sort of childhood of hardship and difficulty.
It's a bit bold to go around saying, 'Prime Minister, if there's an opportunity I really want to be in this department,' but that's what I did.
The issue for me is not just Brexit. It is beyond Brexit - how you conduct politics and the veering towards populism and English nationalism.
Universities have a big role to play... making it very clear to their counterparts, their networks, that the U.K. is not walking away from the world. We still value multilateral cooperation, we still see the EU as a significant partner.
Much of what we buy relies on products from the EU - purchases that British importers make in euros.
Leaving people worse off financially is a Brexit outcome nobody supports, whether they voted leave or remain.
I voted to remain because I thought it was costly and complicated to leave the EU, and that is clearly still the case. But there are opportunities and challenges.
Parliament is a tribal place. So the most difficult thing is to be labelled disloyal, even if you think you are standing up for a principle. The rejection is quite strong.
Westminster is gripped by a fanatical race towards a cliff-edge Brexit and nobody is stopping to think about the impact it would have on the everyday lives of the people we serve as politicians.
The big thing in Ghana is a strong sense that if you failed in your education that was it. There was no system... to give you support later on, there really wasn't much of a second chance so there was a big emphasis in... this is your life chance and you have got to take it.
I was born in the UK and brought up by my single mother in Ghana, where being black was unexceptional. As an adult, I learnt to succeed in white Britain, going from a state sixth form, to Oxford university, to a well-paid job in the City, to becoming the first black Conservative MP to attend the cabinet.
A society in which people feel they have a legitimate right to stop someone expressing their views on campus simply because they are unfashionable or unpopular is rather chilling.
I've been involved in the Conservative party for two decades. I've fought for the party. I have an unusual background - I'm not your typical Tory recruit. I've spent a long time evangelising about why people should look at the Conservative party seriously.
I am an outcast in the Conservative party. But that's Brexit. It has divided families. The country is divided. This is a huge fault line.
Everyone who's rational should have an interest in science. The future of our planet depends on our understanding of science... It's something I value immensely.
The UKRI visa program, it's going to make it easier for researchers to come to the U.K. and do their work.
As a black member of parliament and minister for nearly a decade, I was determined not to be defined by my race. I didn't want to be 'the black politician', when being black is just a part of who I am.
I am instinctively wary of identity politics. Ultimately, no two black men are the same, any more than two white men are the same.
The more painful incidents of racism I chose to forget, to suffer in silence, or use humour to deflect rather than confront. I didn't want to be the angry black man.
Nothing of substance is being achieved or even proposed, while the country remains trapped in the Kafka-esque misery that Brexit has become.
Ever since Theresa May's premiership, I have become suspicious of the 'lectern moment'. That is when the prime minister steps outside Downing Street to address the nation on Brexit.
The sheer drop in sterling since 2016 is only a taste of what's to come if we continue down the destructive route of a no-deal Brexit.
Brexit is an immensely complex national challenge encompassing issues from sovereignty and trade to security in an increasingly interdependent world.
One point leavers and remainers agree on is that if there had never been a referendum, and this deal had been proposed as the basis for our country's future, it would have rightly been rejected by parliament and the public.
Parliament is relentless, it never stops.
I started thinking about getting into politics when David Cameron became leader.
I want to ensure we have more nurseries in schools, and that they open in time for parents to get to work.
That's my upbringing. Try, if it doesn't work out, try again. It was the same thing with Parliament.
At the Oxford Union I'd never debated before but I gave it a go.
As a child, my mother would read to me late into the night. I didn't enjoy it at the time but she always used to say that the inheritance she was going to leave us was a good education.
The astonishing thing for me is that I had a career before politics and I never thought about my colour.
Every election cycle there has been some manoeuvre against me, so at some level I am used to it.
The Tory Party only talks to Brexiteers. It almost demonises... It comes across as dismissive of those who are not.
