Question: According to the recent British crime survey, the number of people who were very worried they would be victims of crime in the coming years has gone down slightly, or stayed the same over recent years. So there is no fear of a big crime wave under Labour. Do you accept that?

Ann Widdecombe: No I don't accept that at all. I think you just have to look at the facts as they stand. There are two measures of crime, one is Home Office statistics, and they clearly show that under this government we have had the first rise in crime for six years. They are the same statistics that we used to issue - that this government has issued - they are the government's own figures. That to me is significant.

As far as the British crime survey is concerned, the fall in crime is slowing up. And it is a fact which nobody can get out of which is that during the last four years of our term of office, crime fell by 18%, it was the biggest sustained fall in crime for decades.

Using the same statistics this government has presided over the first rise in crime. So when you are using emotive terms like a big crime wave, I don't think I have ever said that. What I have said is crime is rising under Labour and that certainly the fear of crime is very considerable. Violent crime is rising whichever survey you choose to use. So I don't think we can be complacent at all.

Question: You say you wouldn't use emotive language like 'crime wave', do you think Jack Straw has done a responsible enough job as Home Secretary?

Ann Widdecombe: No I don't. I think exactly the opposite. First of all, he has allowed police numbers to fall catastrophically. They have fallen by 2,500 regular officers and nearly 6,000 special constables, since the last General Election. He has let that happen. It was only when we finally did succeed in getting it that fact into the public domain and there was considerable public anger, that he promised more recruits. He neglected, of course, to point out that the numbers he was promising wouldn't actually compensate for those leaving. He has done nothing at the end of it to actually get the police numbers up. Nothing that has been effective.

Secondly his totally irresponsible attitude in letting prisoners out on his special early release scheme, even before the halfway point of their sentence. That has actually created another thousand victims of crime at the hands of people who would have been in jail, but for his intervention.

If you look at what he has described himself as his flagship policy, child curfew orders. There hasn't been a single one. They have been available for 28 months. In the whole country there hasn't been one and as for his anti-social behaviour orders, '5,000 a year' they said, there have been 150 altogether, and they have been available for two years. So at the very best he has been an abject failure as Home Secretary, at worst he has just been wrecklessly irresponsible.

Question: The police federation called for a Royal Commission on policing, on the role of policing. Would you go along with that?

Ann Widdecombe: I am not ecstatic about it for this reason: Royal Commissions are usually a very neat way of putting things in to the wrong box and I can quite understand that this government might actually think it is a good idea because it just delays the problem. I think it is much more important to have immediate action. I don't think you need a Royal Commission. You don't need very learned men sitting around to come up with the common sense conclusions that we have too few policemen doing rather too much, who are over burdened by bureaucracy and inessential tasks, which could easily be taken away from them. They spend far too much time arresting the same people time and time again, and the courts don't appear to have adequate remedies particularly towards the younger offenders. All those things can be tackled by government and you don't need to say 'let's have a Royal Commission and twiddle our thumbs while we wait for conclusions we already know.'

Question: You were talking about the courts there. Jack Straw has recommended a shake up in the courts system. He wants there to be an option where jurors can see a defendants previous convictions. Would you go along with that?

Ann Widdecombe: Dangerous. I think that is very dangerous. It has always been a tenet of British law that you are innocent until proven guilty. And the fact is you might have committed four burglaries, but might not have committed the fifth for which you are accused. You have just as much right to a fair trial in respect of that burglary as you would have when you were being charged with your first. So I don't actually think that is a sensible way forward. It is after all for the judge to take into account a previous record when he is sentencing and that is wholly different.

There may be one or two very extraordinary cases where maybe, in exceptional circumstances, it could happen. They would have to be so very exceptional. If you have for example, four allegations of rape which had not resulted in conviction as a rape but had resulted in conviction of lesser degrees of sexual assault, it might be that somebody would have wanted to bring that to the attention of the jury. I wouldn't want to see it as routine.

Question: You called for a thousand secure training places nation-wide for young offenders. How much would that cost?

Ann Widdecombe: You do it through the PFI initiative. We reckon about £135,000 a year for each individual within. Because it is done through PFI you factor in the capital cost with the current cost.

Question: And how quickly could that be in place?

Ann Widdecombe: Obviously it wouldn't be done in five minutes. I would expect to have it done within the first half of the parliament, or at least I would expect to be making very good progress towards the total in the first half of the parliament and to have got there by the end of full term.

Question: Labour argue they have had a bill to do with yob culture. They say that you used 'premeditated pantomime politics', that is Charles Clarke's quote, to block it's progress through parliament. Well this bill had effective measures to deal with yobs, so it won't get through parliament may be because you ambushed it?

Ann Widdecombe: First of all, both statements are inaccurate. We did not seek to prevent the Bill's passage through parliament. What we wanted was adequate discussion in committee. This is the whole point. We were supporting that bill, we had supported that bill, we did not oppose it at second reading. But when, it was cobbled together very quickly as a pre-election headline grabbing measure, and when we came to examine it in detail in committee, we found so much wrong that the government actually dropped two clauses.

We were only allowed to examine the first half of the bill. They promised us 16 Committee sessions, they then dropped that to 14. We ended up with virtually the whole of part two completely unexamined. We had 56 clauses, 42 opposition amendments, 10 government amendments and 6 detailed schedules unexamined. So we said, 'right, we couldn't let that happen and we didn't want the committee to finish on that day'. So at 6.50pm, with all these things undebated, four of us went into the committee and sat down.

I don't know whether you are aware of parliamentary procedure, but that meant it couldn't proceed, we didn't make a noise we just sat in silence. And what we hoped was, as a result of that, the committee would have to meet again. What has actually happened is that the government decided just to deem that the committee had finished anyway, and that all the debates that hadn't taken place had and that all the motions that hadn't been put, had been put, and that the committee which hadn't reported to the House, had reported to the House. This is the sort of elected dictatorship we live under, they just deem that it happens. So it hasn't delayed it's passage through parliament, it was never intended to delay it's passage through parliament, but the result is that yesterday we had to cram the whole of the report stage and third reading into a few hours. Net result, part two is still unexamined.

Question: Was it a difficult decision to decide this procedural measure, or did you decide it wasn't really going to be that much of a fuss?

Ann Widdecombe: As I say, what we were trying to do was to get the committee to meet again. And looking back at past precedents, it is a technique that has been used once or twice in the past and has always resulted in nothing more than an authority from the House to the committee to exclude the members, well they don't go back. But the committee at least meets again. And that was what we expected to happen.

It was a difficult decision to take because normally front benchers don't get involved, you would send in back benchers, but suspecting the spiteful attitude of this government and it's very dictatorial attitude, I decided I should do it myself, and now I am very glad I did, because if they are going to take measures against us, I would not have liked to have put somebody else in that position whilst cowering down in the trench myself.

Question: Will you accept the rebuke?

Ann Widdecombe: No, as far as I am concerned we were doing our job, which was to get parliamentary scrutiny.

Question: Labour would say, what kind of example does this set to Britain's youth?

Ann Widdecombe: What kind of example are they setting?

Question: You keep arguing that Labour is soft on crime, yet your former ministerial colleague Ken Clarke, who was in fact Home Secretary, says that Jack Straw was more right wing than him on law and order. So who is right, you or Ken?

Ann Widdecombe: All I am concerned about is Jack Straw and his record on crime. And as I say, you cannot get round the fact that we left behind a substantial fall in crime, and he has squandered that legacy. So he may talk tough, he talks extremely tough, but he acts extremely weak.

Question: Lord Chief Justice and the Chief Inspector of Prisons and the Director General of Prisons say our prisons are overcrowded and can't cope with any more?

Ann Widdecombe: They are overcrowded and I find it significant that if you look at this government's stewardship of our prisons you have got more overcrowding, time spent out of cells down, so people are locked up for longer. Slopping out is back in three wings of three prisons. Purposeful activity - that is work and education - have gone down. In every indicator that you look at, this government has sent the prison service backwards.

After Woolf, we made terrific progress, particularly in those first few years of the prison service agency, huge progress on all those indicators. We eliminated slopping out, we eliminated three prisoners sharing a cell designed for two. We reduced the percentage of two sharing to a cell designed for one, and we did it against the background of a sharply rising prison population. So I don't want any excuses from the government about how the numbers have gone up. We have got those things down, with the numbers going up. They have just neglected the prisons.

Question: What would you do to further improve prison conditions?

Ann Widdecombe: First of all I would make the regimes constructive and I think that is essential that people are either in full time education or full time work. I think that idleness is the cancer in our prisons at the moment. Work (which has gone very sharply down under this government) effectively means a couple of hours a day. Therefore you don't actually counteract what brought an awful lot of them into prison in the first place: a chaotic unstructured lifestyle in which they have never known the pattern of a modestly successful life, where you go out, and you earn, and you make distributions from those earnings, and your aspirations are based on those earnings. They have never seen that around, and therefore my view is, and it can be done in other countries, I am sick of these excuses as to why we can't do it, where we can do it here, and I think if I become Home Secretary by the end of the first parliament, we will be on the road to, we won't be there, but we will be on the road to having one of the most civilised prison systems in Europe.

Question: Martin Narey says that your case to make every prisoner work, says there are practical difficulties to finding useful employment for inmates, because of course they can do something very menial, but there is very little to give them skills or jobs on release?

Ann Widdecombe: That is exactly what is going on in prisons at the moment. The work is very menial. There is a lot of cleaning, you can get work as a cleaner very easily in prisons. There is a lot of sock making for the prison population and tedious work of that sort.

Question: So you would have meaningful training?

Ann Widdecombe: We would have meaningful work yes. I want work coming in to prisons from outside contractors. I want prison workshops run as little self financing enterprises on the grounds that instead of taking the money back, the Treasury would leave it, providing and only providing it went back into the workshops to expand. By that, I mean take on more equipment, or another couple of prisoners. That is the way that small businesses grow outside the prison gates, so why not inside, too?

Question: Lord Woolf suggests restorative justice where offenders must face their victims. Does that have your support rather than custodial sentences?

Ann Widdecombe: It is an interesting proposition, but I went to watch restorative justice in action. I found it tied down a lot of people's time for many hours and when I finally got up to go after half a day at it, it was still going on. But during the lunch break I actually said to the policeman who was conducting it "I don't think that that chap is going to mend his way as a result of this", and he said "no, that one will almost certainly come back". Now there has been a huge investment in time and I don't deny that it can work in some cases but I would need a lot more than anecdotal support, I would need a lot of convincing and research before I wanted to put more resources into it.

Question: You said that you were going to create the most civilised prison system...

Ann Widdecombe: I said on the road to it.

Question: Martin Narey says that the prison service is institutionally racist, what would you do about that?

Ann Widdecombe: I don't believe it is. I don't like the term institutional racism, because I am not quite sure what it means, and I don't think anybody is. I think it is dangerous because I think when you use that term, it can be taken as branding all the people who work within it. My experience of the people who work within the prison service is that most of them are very conscientious individuals trying to do a very difficult job. And of course racism is always unacceptable, but I do not and I will not brand the prison service institutionally racist. I don't believe that.

Question: A number of groups have urged you not to make asylum and immigration a major issue at the General Election, because it will increase racial tensions, they say. What is your response to them?

Ann Widdecombe: I think they are wrong. I think that what does increase racial tensions is the completely uncontrolled system which is effectively what we have got at the moment. We have got a doubling of applications. We have had a growth in the backlog. At one point under this government it went over 100,000 and when you have a system that is out of control, that is what can cause tensions. What I want to do, is to make sure that the rules are applied properly and therefore I believe that if we detain all new asylum applicants in secure reception centres, not do as this government is doing, which I don't think most people realise: I went to Winchester Prison the other day, it was full of asylum seekers.

We would detain them in secure reception centres where the security is the perimeter, it is not within. It is not a prison in that sense, but we would then be able to do three things. The first is, we would be able to remove those who we refuse, because we would know where they were, it would be a simple business. Secondly, it would send out a huge deterrent message to people who were coming to play the system, because the message that would go out is that if you come to Britain with a false claim, you will be detained, you will be dealt with quickly and you will be sent back, and nobody is going to pay £5000 to a human trafficking agent for that. But thirdly, the thing that is always overlooked, is that it is also much fairer for the genuine applicant.

The genuine applicant suffers at the moment because the queue is far too long and he is not distinguishable from the unfounded applicant. He is clogged up behind 100,000 others. If we can get the numbers down in this way, it will help him. The current system is cruel, quite frankly. Somebody comes to this country, morally and legally entitled to a safe haven, what they actually get is a very hit and miss business in which they are dispersed to parts of the country that has no experience of coping with their problems and in which they have no connections at all. They have to cope with a social security system that most of us who speak English find pretty incomprehensible, they don't have any tailored package, and we know that some of them haven't even got their vouchers through and have had to go to charities for food handouts. It is very very cruel.

I think it is much better to have people in secure reception centres, and then what you do with them when they are there is to make a proper assessment of their needs. Any linguistic support they need, educational needs of their kids, social services support and medical needs. That is a 100 times - a thousand times - as humane as what is going on at the moment in this country. Yet people can't see it and it amazes me.

Question: Labour argue that your idea of detention centres is impractical because it would require the building of these reception centres, or perimeters which would cost billions of pounds?

Ann Widdecombe: That is rot, and it is serious rot. And it is disingenuous rot and they know that. They built a detention centre at Oakington. Oakington cost £6 million and when it is fully up and running it will cope with one fifth of all asylum applicants. If you can do one fifth for £6 million what crazy arithmetic says that the other four fifths are going to cost £2 billion?

Question: So £30 million?

Ann Widdecombe: I wouldn't actually put a figure on it, because I am not irresponsible like they are, but what I do know is that it doesn't tot up to anything like the sums they are suggesting.

Question: But what would you do with them in the meantime?

Ann Widdecombe: You have to build up to it. I mean common sense says this. If we were elected on, for example, May 3rd, you wouldn't have detention places on May 4th, for a flow of 71,000 applicants across the year. Secondly common sense also says, that there is no point in saying we must wait until we have got enough places for everybody before you implement the policy, therefore you would have to implement by degrees. And so we would start with applicants from safe countries where there is no record of persecution. We would start with those, and then as we were supplying places we would build up incrementally so that everybody was detained.

Question: And so people would be living in their existing circumstances until you build up?

Ann Widdecombe: Yes, when you say existing circumstances, we would need to have a good long look at the dispersal system at the moment, which I think is working grossly inefficiently and pretty unfairly. It has actually split families in some cases.

Question: Are you looking forward to your roving campaigning role for the election. When you go round to the towns and cities, what do you think will be the key issues that you will be engaging the public with?

Ann Widdecombe: Yes rather. Most people who raise these issues, raise health, they raise crime, education, Europe, asylum and tax. Those are the issues that come up most often. They come up in different orders, probably depending on people's immediate needs. You know, if you have got somebody in the health service, health will come up first. If you are all fit and well, then may be education comes up. But everybody raises crime in the top two or three. Everybody, everywhere I go. And so I expect crime to be a very big issue, but there is no such thing as a single-issue election. And also of course, elections are events, so we shall have to see.