Drugs policy rethink for Widdecombe

The policy was unveiled at conference on Widdecombe's birthday

Shadow Home Secretary Ann Widdecombe has promised a rethink on her party's policy on drugs.

Her change of heart comes after the publicly announced hard-line strategy was undermined by senior party colleagues and mauled in the media.

Miss Widdecombe unveiled the Tories' new tough "zero tolerance" approach on cannabis at the party conference in October.

It was a very surprising day and obviously not one of my best moments

Ann Widdecombe

Within hours it was criticised for being over zealous and there were claims that it would criminalise thousands of young people unnecessarily.

Confusion also reigned over whether the policy had been cleared properly with the rest of the shadow cabinet.

Speaking to the BBC on Friday, Miss Widdecombe said it was time to look at it again.

Tories' dope confessions

She said: "I am a very practical politician and you know that once you've got a policy - it doesn't matter how unfairly it may have been parodied or ridiculed - once you've got a policy that has been through those sort of rough waters you would be a very great fool if you didn't say: `Right, let's see if we can do it in a slightly different way'."

Following her conference speech eight members of the shadow cabinet admitted to having smoked cannabis themselves in what was seen as a concerted move to undermine her.

Miss Widdecombe said: "I'm not really sure what went wrong...but as far as I was concerned we had a policy which I thought would have been properly cleared.

"It was a very surprising day and obviously not one of my best moments in my political career, but on the other hand these things happen."

Ms Widdecombe said the media had been longing for her to "come a cropper" but added: "You know I've managed to face you lot down before and I will do it again."