Parliament: The Sketch: For the man who has everything - a pair of Parkhurst slippers

AS USUAL Home Office questions were largely taken up with issues of crime and punishment; namely what crimes had ministers committed over the past month and how best could Anne Widdecombe punish them? Indeed, was punishment the best way to proceed, or should she just get them to make slippers, since, according to the Conservative MP John Bercow, this seems to be a central pillar of current rehabilitation policy.

"Between March 1997 and March 2000," he gravely informed Paul Boateng, the Home Office minister, "prisoners will have manufactured 260,000 pairs of slippers between them". What he wanted to know was what long-term job opportunities this frenzied productivity might ultimately lead to.

Obviously, demand for slippers is high just at the moment, as the present season reaches its annual peak, but, he implied, concentrating job training so intensively in the loose-footwear sector could only lead to difficulties down the line. Surely, some offenders should be diversified into mules or flip-flops to avoid a collapse in the world price of slippers, with all the attendant social miseries that would bring.

Mr Boateng ignored his question. "260,000 pairs of slippers, Madame Speaker," he said, "and not one of them fits the Honourable Lady". This unchivalrous little non-sequitur rather gave the game away.

Mr Boateng was evidently still smarting after a brisk exchange with Miss Widdecombe over a similar subject. She asked him to confirm that "purposeful activity" for prisoners had declined to below 23 hours a week, a figure, she explained, that was the lowest since 1991 and below the 26 hours achieved under the last government.

Mr Boateng summoned all his considerable powers of bluster. The Government target for "purposeful activity" was now 24 hours a week, he said sternly, "which we are well on the way to delivering".

This wasn't quite how Miss Widdecombe had wanted her statistics confirmed but it did the job nonetheless and she pointed out the fact.

Mr Boateng looked sulky and went into one of those unsightly spasms of rectitude that occasionally seize cornered ministers. "Labour is delivering!" he yelped. Largely delivering slippers, it seems, but then who, apart from Mr Bercow, is counting?

Ian Gibson, the Labour MP for Norwich North, asked the Home Secretary whether he had contemplated following up a North Carolina experiment, in which miscreants were forced to parade down the high street carrying a placard describing their crime.

Michael O Brien, answering for Mr Straw, said that he hadn't, but Miss Widdecombe's eyes lit up at this point. She clearly thought this was an excellent idea, and, as it happened, she had some placards she'd prepared earlier, ready to press into Mr Straw's hands.

After he had made a statement about changes to the price of passports she pounced with one marked: "I torture innocent citizens". When, she demanded to know, would he stop persecuting ordinary members of the public?

"The spirit of Ebenezer Scrooge now lives on", she continued, speaking for all those who had been hoping for a 10-year passport this Christmas, rather than a pair of Parkhurst slippers.

And then she called for sentence to be passed: "I have always eschewed the practice of calling for ministerial resignations", she said, "but does he not think the time has now come to consider the position of the member for Warwickshire North?" The member for Warwickshire North, Michael O' Brien, tried to look as if this idea was so risible that no sane person would give it house room, but he needn't have worried.

Mr Straw has now perfected the art of non-stick contrition - an arrangement which allows ministers to take responsibility for cock-ups without having to take any unpleasant consequences. All Mr O'Brien has to do is look suitably remorseful in the dock and he'll be discharged with a spotless record.