Shadow Home Secretary Ann Widdecombe was greeted by protesters when she visited Sussex.

Members of the Defend Asylum Seekers group joined campaigners from the Socialist Alliance when Miss Widdecombe visited Hove police station and Somerhill Junior School, Hove, to meet Tory candidate Jenny Langston and residents.

Miss Widdecombe was met by a group of Labour supporters waving banners in support of Labour candidate Des Turner when she later arrived at Telscombe Civic Centre.

There she met residents and Tory supporters as well as Tory candidate Geoffrey Theobald.

Miss Widdecombe told the gathering the Conservatives were the only party to offer answers to the crime and asylum issues. She said the Tories would create asylum reception centres, which would not be prisons.

She said: "Our big problem at the moment is that we do not know where they are because they disappear mighty quickly once they get the result of their application."

She said the centres would also prevent those who played the system by losing their forms.

She said Britain was seen as a soft touch. If that was not the case, she asked, why was there an asylum centre in France where people would try to leave to come to Britain when France was an equally good place to seek asylum.

Earlier Miss Widdecombe told Conservative supporters in Seaford that the Tories had the answers to crime problems in Britain.

She said: "We have got the answers. They're not magic wands but they are answers. If worked through probably they will make a difference."

She met Tory candidate for the Lewes and Seaford constituency Simon Sinnatt at the Seaford and District Constitutional Club in Crouch Lane, Seaford, which is being used as the headquarters for Mr Sinnatt's election campaign.

Miss Widdecombe also met Inspector Ron Priddy, who took her on a short tour of Seaford High Street and Broad Street, where he told her the town had a relatively low crime rate although there were some drink related problems at weekends.

Inspector Priddy showed her the CCTV cameras and told her police had applied for funding for additional cameras to the Home Office.

She told her supporters Conservatives would tackle the 12 to 15-year-old age group, some of whom were making whole neighbourhoods miserable with their criminal acts. These people would be placed in secure training units.

She also said: "We also need to see our police on the beat and not in police stations doing paperwork." Tories would also look at sentencing.