Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy tells JASON GROVES that prison works: 'We've all spent too long trying to understand criminals... it's time we sent out a clear message'

Prison works. Michael Howard's famous mantra triggered apoplexy on the liberal Left in the 1990s and has been out of fashion at Westminster for decades.

But if Nick Timothy gets his way, it will be coming back.

The combative Shadow Justice Secretary is a huge admirer of the former Tory home secretary and party leader.

'Prison works,' he says simply. 'I use that phrase a lot because prison is there to punish, and it's there to do justice, but it is (also) there literally to take people out of circulation.

'When Michael Howard launched the big prison building programme in the Nineties, what followed was a reduction in half in crime, and that's what we've got to do again.

'Crimes like shoplifting have gone up by 20 per cent because there's no message to anybody who shoplifts that there will be a meaningful punishment.'

It is Thursday morning when the Daily Mail sits down with the shadow minister in a cafe in his West Suffolk constituency.

Across the country hundreds of thugs, thieves and drug addicts are slinking out of prison gates under Labour's latest early-release scheme. Many are celebrating; one catches the eye by boasting to TV cameras that he is 'going to go stealing again'.

Nick Timothy speaking with Jason Groves, political editor of the Daily Mail, in Brandon, Suffolk

'It's disgusting,' Mr Timothy says. 'I think people are appalled. People expect crime to be punished, and when criminals are put away, they expect them to serve their sentence.

'And to see people who should still be inside leaving, celebrating, joking about going out and committing more crimes is disgusting, and it's a state failure, and it needs to be corrected, which is what we're trying to do.'

Mr Timothy has arrived armed with a shiny new policy committing the Tories to building 50,000 new prison places – a staggering increase on the current 90,000-space estate.

The £2billion-a-year policy, funded by cuts to foreign aid and Whitehall budgets, would, he says, allow the Tories to scrap Labour's early-release policy and reverse the 'effective abolition' of short sentences for crimes such as shoplifting and knife possession.

'We need to be able to reverse those two things, and we need to be able to say with certainty that if you commit a violent crime, or if you're a repeat burglar or shoplifter guilty of one of those acquisitive crimes – yeah, you will definitely go to prison.'

All well and good, but ministers point out that a large part of the reason prisons are in crisis is because the last government did not build enough of them.

Mr Timothy does not dispute this – but says that is not a reason to give in to the soft-justice campaigners now.

The scale of the cuts to the prison budget during the Coalition years, when he served as an adviser to then-home secretary Theresa May, was 'a mistake' he concedes. 'We didn't build enough, it's true,' he says.

'I'm not going to defend or justify the fact that successive governments, going back many years, and before even the Coalition, didn't build enough. The whole point of this policy is to acknowledge that.'

But there is a broader theme. Britain has become too tolerant of those who seek to harm society, whether it is criminals, radical Islamists or foreign regimes, he says. Too much time has been spent offering understanding to criminals; too little trying to protect the public from them.

'I think we've done enough understanding,' he says bluntly. 'We need to return consequences to the criminal justice system.'

Mr Timothy says he was 'sickened' by the recent sight of Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband shaking hands with his Iranian counterpart just days before what appears to have been an Iranian-backed plot to attack RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire.

'We all know what the Iranian state has been doing to its own people,' he says.

'We all know what it does in the Middle East, but actually, there's lots more that it does, including on the streets of this country. Iran is responsible for more plots involving a threat to life in this country than Russia.

Michael Howard, former leader of the Conservative Party, previously declared: 'Prison works'

'I looked at Ed Miliband and I thought, "You're a mug. You're a mug, and you're allowing Britain to be treated like that".'

He has harsh words too for the Archbishop of Canterbury, Sarah Mullally, who was recently forced into a humiliating climbdown after handing an 'interfaith award' to a Pakistani cleric who praised Osama bin Laden – on the 25th anniversary of 9/11.

Mr Timothy, who was instrumental in bringing the debacle to public attention, said it took him '15 minutes on the internet' to uncover the cleric's extremist background.

The episode has 'harmed' the Church but is part of a pattern, he says, contrasting the efforts of local congregations to raise money to repair church roofs with 'the Archbishop of Canterbury talking about spending £100million on (slavery) reparations for what the Church may or may not have done hundreds of years ago'.

'If you talk to local vicars and parishioners here in Suffolk, the church is a completely different institution,' he says.

Mr Timothy is co-chairing a Tory 'integration commission' charged by Kemi Badenoch with finding ways to build a more cohesive society. He is not a fan of multiculturalism and the review is expected to come down hard against institutions such as the benefits system offering their services in languages other than English.

He confirms the review is also looking at whether to come down in favour of banning the burqa, despite Mrs Badenoch questioning the practicality of the idea.

'I personally loathe the burqa and the niqab,' he says. 'When I see a woman wearing it, I see a human being in a ball and chain. It's a deliberate attempt to cut people off from the rest of society. I think it's bad for the people involved, but it's terrible on a social level, and terrible for social trust.'

Not that there is any shortage of things for the review to consider. He cites the attitude of the authorities in the murder of Henry Nowak, the Southampton student who was arrested as he lay dying when his killer lied, accusing the 18-year-old of a racist attack.

The failure to intervene with Southport killer Axel Rudakubana, who saw his case closed three times by the Prevent counter-terror scheme, also rankles.

As does the case of Nottingham killer Valdo Calocane, where a public inquiry heard evidence he was not sectioned before he went on the rampage in part because some in authority felt black men were over-represented in the mental health system.

'This stuff is happening all the time, and people are suffering as a result,' he says, adding that it is time to decide 'whether we're going to be a country where we're all sovereign, responsible, accountable individuals, or whether we're going to start judging people based on whether they're part of one ethnic group or religious or racial group'.

We are chatting at Tilly's Tearooms, in the market town of Brandon in the north of Mr Timothy's constituency, hard up against the border with Norfolk. It may be a coincidence but a dog in the cafe gives a bark when the name of nearby Labour MP Jenny Riddell-Carpenter comes up in conversation.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has charged a party integration commission, of which Mr Timothy is co-chair, with finding ways towards a more cohesive society

The hapless nature minister sparked ridicule and anger in equal measure when she claimed that country pubs, warm ale and black labradors – all staples of country life in Suffolk – represented a 'very far-Right nostalgic vision of Britain that we don't want to have, [that] never really existed'.

'I have an Irish setter so presumably that means I'm not a fascist,' Mr Timothy says, laughing, before adding: 'People just think it's insane. When people hear politicians talking like that, they just think what planet are they on?

'This is the kind of thing that will stay with her for several years because it's utterly ridiculous.'

Like most opposition politicians, Mr Timothy had one eye on Andy Burnham's big conference speech this week – and came away from watching it with renewed confidence about the Tories' prospects.

The new PM's focus on big constitutional issues such as electoral reform and Brexit are 'not the priorities of the country', he says, pointing to a 'worrying' lack of focus on economic growth.

'He talks about the cost of living, but the unavoidable consequence of everything he says is tax rises,' he says.

So can the Tories win the next election?

'We can absolutely win,' he says. 'The country gave us a hiding in the general election, and I completely understand why... (but) the country really likes Kemi. People are really open to her, and we've got to keep going. We're doing the right things.'