Nick Clegg - Liberal Democrat leader

Question: How should the EU and the British government respond to the Irish rejection of the Lisbon treaty?

Nick Clegg: First of all we have to respect the views of the Irish people and not pretend that somehow their vote counts for nothing and that the long march to integration should carry on regardless.

So I am flatly opposed to anything that tries to steamroller the thing through in the face of the overwhelming no vote in Ireland.

Secondly we need clarity very, very urgently. If the Irish government itself thinks that's the end of the road as far as internal debate is concerned then to all intents and purposes the treaty cannot proceed then we've got to decide quickly how we are going to continue operating under the existing rules.

The very worst thing for Europe, for Britain and pro-Europeans like me is that we have months and months of wrangling and cogitation and further uncertainty.

I personally think that the Lisbon treaty is a good treaty and that it is in Britain's interests to ratify it.

That's why in the final stages of scrutiny in Parliament there is no harm done in us signalling what would have been our view if the treaty was coming into effect.

However I don't think the treaty is sufficiently valuable in itself to pitch the European Union into a bout of prolonged introspection - I think that would be fatal for the prospects of the EU.

What I am looking for in the coming days is clarity according to a quick timetable so that the heads of government decide one way or the other whether they can conjure up a solution that the Irish find acceptable and if not, an acknowledgement that the old rules will just have to prevail.

Question: Do you really think you can win the Henley by-election?

Clegg: We fight every by-election to win but it is a big ask as this has been a Conservative seat for generations and it's got a big Conservative majority with an outgoing MP Boris Johnson who was very popular.

Having said that I don't believe in doing things by halves and I happen to know the area very well because I grew up around here - not in the nice Henley bit but in Chinnor which is in the north east of the constituency.

Whilst parts of the constituency are very affluent the image that the streets are paved with gold is not true, it is very mixed demographically.

Crucially this constituency has never really been properly contested before so what we are finding on the doorstep is that people are quite enthused that the Liberal Democrats are campaigning as vigorously as we are because they never really had a choice before.

Question: Are you concerned that, as in Crewe and Nantwich, a strong anti-Labour feeling is translating into Conservative rather than Liberal Democrat votes?

Clegg: There is no evidence to show that is the case. In the local elections we pushed Labour into third place, we were the main beneficiaries in the Labour heartlands of people fleeing Labour and that's why we took control of my city Sheffield and a whole belt of cities in the north including Hull, Grimsby, Warrington, Liverpool, the list goes on.

The truth about Crewe is that it had been the beneficiary of Lord Ashcroft for some time, the Conservatives had made it a major target in the North West for months before and it was the luck of the draw for the Conservatives that it was one of the only seats in the North West where they were the main challengers.

Labour rather stupidly, from their point of view, made it easier for the Conservatives because they called the by-election so early.

Those were the circumstances but it is not an accurate reflection at all of what has gone on throughout the North West where we doubled the number of MPs and where we are the only challengers to Labour in their major urban heartlands.

Question: How do you think party funding should be reformed?

Clegg: It is an absolute scandal that parties are funded with such a lack of transparency.

We still don't know how the Conservatives funded their last election campaign, we still don't know how David Cameron's constituency organisation is funded, and we still don't know what Lord Ashcroft's tax status is.

When we tabled a bill in the House of Lords to make it illegal for anyone who are not tax residents in this country to take up their position in the second chamber the Conservatives backed off from it - why did they do that? Was it to protect Lord Ashcroft?

So there are lots of questions that demand answers and we need simple rules, a strict cap on donations made both from individuals and trade union members, strict rules on the money spent at and between general elections and total transparency of sources of money provided to each party.