Quotes By Theresa May

When you first come into Parliament, it's a daunting place because you feel you've so much to learn. Once you've been re-elected, you feel much more confident. It just gives you a bit of a boost.

You only have to look at London, where almost half of all primary school children speak English as a second language, to see the challenges we now face as a country. This isn't fair to anyone: how can people build relationships with their neighbours if they can't even speak the same language?

We are seeing, we have seen in the last figures a significant drop in the number of net migrants coming into the United Kingdom. So we are cutting out abuse, we've restricted the number of economic - non-EU economic migrants. We're cutting out abuse across the student visa system, particularly, and we're having an impact.

I think for voters what matters is the values that drive the government.

So we mustn't lower our guard in any sense because of what has happened in terms of the death of Osama Bin Laden and we are certainly not doing that. The terror threat level here in the U.K. remains at severe and we're very conscious of the need to continue that.

Communities need to feel that they can accommodate people. Rather than feeling that it's not possible to integrate and that the stress and strain on housing and public services is too great.

Flexible working is not just for women with children. It is necessary at the other end of the scale. If people can move into part-time work, instead of retirement, then that will be a huge help. If people can fit their work around caring responsibilities for the elderly, the disabled, then again that's very positive.

I was a teenage godmother.

We're getting rid of bureaucracy, so that we're releasing time for police officers to be crime fighters and not form writers.

Within the E.U., in a wider context, people are increasingly recognising the need to prevent the abuse of free movement.

Like Indiana Jones, I don't like snakes - though that might lead some to ask why I'm in politics.

No, I can tell you one of the first things that happens to a home secretary when they arrive in the job is that they are given a briefing about the security matters that they will be dealing with and I deal with security matters on a daily basis.

The aim is to create here in Britain a really hostile environment for illegal migration.

If you can speak English, and you can get a place on a proper course at a proper university, you can come to study in Britain.

Well can I just make a point about the numbers because people talk a lot about police numbers as if police numbers are the holy grail. But actually what matters is what those police are doing. It's about how those police are deployed.

Today, there's an expectation that you get to know public people. In the past, it was much more what you did and how you presented yourself.

I believe it's important that we ensure that the police have a modern and flexible workforce. I think that's what is necessary, so that they can provide the public with the service that they want.

People have to make journeys, what we want is people to have alternatives in public transport so that they can make a choice about the sort of way in which they're going to travel.

I'm not sure I should reveal the sources of my clothes.

I will not allow a Delia Smith cookbook in my house! It's all so precise with Delia, and it makes cooking seem so inaccessible.

People will be able to raise their concerns: what are local officers doing about the drug dealing in the local park? What's happening about the pub where all the trouble is? And the police will have to respond.

Tying money up for 40 years doesn't sound appealing when you are young.

Obviously local people will have their local voice through the police and crime commissioners that they've elected to determine their local policing.

National security is the first duty of government but we are also committed to reversing the substantial erosion of civil liberties.

It's always an interesting experience for a politician to be heard in silence, I have to say.

In tough times, everyone has to take their share of the pain.

We are mandating forces to hold regular neighbourhood beat meetings. These meetings will give local people the chance to scrutinise the work of their local police.

Starting with the highest-risk countries, and focusing on the route to Britain that is widely abused, student visas, we will increase the number of interviews to considerably more than 100,000, starting next financial year. From there, we will extend the interviewing programme further across all routes to Britain, wherever the evidence takes us.

And it is crucial of course that chief constables are able to make decisions within their budgets about how they deploy their police officers to the greatest effect to ensure that they're able to do the job that the public want them to do.

There's much more we can be doing in Parliament, we could be giving more power back to people at local government level, through local referendums.