Former prisons minister Ann Widdecombe has criticised Government plans to chemically castrate paedophiles, warning the policy will simply "create an awful lot of work for an awful lot of lawyers."
Speaking to GB News, Widdecombe expressed serious concerns about the proposal to forcibly administer medication to sex offenders.
Widdecombe claimed the policy is primarily motivated by prison overcrowding rather than genuine justice reform.
She told GB News: "What is driving this plan? It isn't a feeling that we ought to look at the justice system and review it, it isn't that at all.
Ann Widdecombe has hit out at plans for chemical castration for sex criminals
GB News
"It isn't that we think the victim's getting a bad deal, and we ought to review that. No. It's that there aren't enough prison places, and that is what is driving all of this."
She expressed particular concern about sentence reductions being implemented solely to free up prison capacity.
"And when a sentence comes down to a third, and it could be quite a serious offence, that is solely in order to free up prison space. Now that is completely the wrong way round," Widdecombe said.
Drawing on her own experience as prisons minister, Widdecombe outlined alternative approaches she implemented to address overcrowding.
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Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Gauke visited Texas in February to study the state's reformsPA"I had exactly this problem. The prison population in 1993 was 40,000. I came into the prisons job in 1995. It went up in my time to 60,000: I didn't let them all out," she said.
Widdecombe warned that chemical castration is not a guaranteed solution for preventing reoffending: "It's not guaranteed to work, that's the first thing.
"So you could actually release a paedophile into the community and say, 'It's all right, he's been castrated', it doesn't work. That is the first danger," she explained.
She also raised serious concerns about the legal implications of forced medication.
"The second danger is, simply, what you're going to do is you're going to create an awful lot of work for an awful lot of lawyers," Widdecombe said.
Widdecombe told GB News that the move could spark more legal issues for Labour
GB News
She directly criticised the Prime Minister's approach to criminal justice reform: "The idea that the state can forcibly make you go through a process of taking drugs, and can actually make you do that, strap you down if you resist, or whatever it is they're going to do... Frankly, I think Starmer's gone mad, and I've thought that for a long time."
Widdecombe offered an alternative vision focused on rehabilitation rather than chemical intervention.
"It's driven by the need to free up prison spaces, it's not driven by what is going to make things safer. The big deal for me has always been what you do with people when you've got them in prison? That is the crucial thing," she said.
She advocated for comprehensive rehabilitation programmes within prisons.
"If you don't have proper training, proper workshops, proper education, offending behaviour courses like temper management, for example, if you don't have those things, then the chances are that the chap who leaves the prison gate is as bad, and maybe possibly worse than the chap who entered the prison gates."
Widdecombe rejected the notion that rehabilitation is a liberal approach: "When people say to me, oh, it's very liberal to talk about rehabilitation, I say, No, it ain't. It's actually a crucial tool of public protection and when will anybody wake up to that?"
