Ann Widdecombe has defended Conservative values and attacked the something-for-nothing ethos of the sixties.

Widdecombe said the 1960s were a time "at a time when rules and values were often seen not only as irrelevant but positively dangerous".

She said she did not "go with the flow" and did not take part in sit-ins or indulge in sixties permissiveness.

"If you were young at that time, you were led to believe that the world owed you a living, and all you had to do was to shout loud enough or demonstrate long enough and it would be handed to you on a plate. It won't come as much of a surprise if I tell you that I saw things rather differently," she told the gathered Conservative faithful.

Described as "a throwback to the pre-war imperial Tories", Widdecombe is seen as an "assiduous" cultivator of the UK's "moral majority.

Popular with core Tory voters and with a high profile in a campaign much criticised for its absence of prominent women, Widdecombe said her involvement in politics was a calling.

However, she is controversial with pro-choice campaigners who say she has been opposed to abortion from her student days.

Widdecombe cut her political teeth with Lady Olga Maitland's anti-CND group in the heady days of the cold war and her first maiden speech in the Commons was a eulogy to Trident missiles.

Whilst she spurned "flower power" Widdecombe claims she has an open mind - having changed religion following the advent of women priests. At the time she denounced the Lambeth Palace clerics as "weak kneed liberals" becoming the first person since the Reformation to be received as a Roman Catholic in the House of Commons crypt.

"Many of you will know that I've thought long and hard about my religious views, and some time ago that caused me to change my church," she explained.

"But I haven't changed my party, not because I've stopped thinking about my political values but because I've tested them, and challenged them, and found Conservative values as relevant today as they have ever been," she said.