Kemi Badenoch has unveiled plans for the biggest prison-building programme since the Victorian era.

Vowing to reverse Labour's soft-justice approach, the Conservative leader has signed off proposals to build 50,000 new prison places, increasing the size of the estate by more than 50 per cent.

The scheme will be funded mainly by slashing the foreign aid budget to just £1billion a year.

Mrs Badenoch said the move would allow a future Tory government to scrap Labour's early-release scheme and drop the effective ban on short prison sentences for offences such as shoplifting and carrying a knife.

In an exclusive interview with the Daily Mail, Shadow Justice Secretary Nick Timothy said Britain had offered too much 'understanding' to criminals in recent years and not enough punishment. 

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

The plan comes just days after Labour's latest early-release scheme saw hundreds of offenders celebrate as they walked free from jails across the country, in scenes Mr Timothy described as 'disgusting'.

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The prison-building programme is designed to revive the Tories' traditional reputation as the party of law and order and restore public confidence in the creaking criminal justice system.

Mr Timothy told the Mail he believes in the mantra 'Prison Works', which was popularised by former Tory home secretary Michael Howard in the 1990s.

The £2billion-a-year building programme will be funded by steep cuts to foreign aid and the Whitehall spin machine.

Mr Timothy said Labour's soft approach was undermining public confidence in the criminal justice system.

'People expect crime to be punished,' he said. 'And when criminals are put away, they expect them to serve their sentence.'

The landmark policy comes on the eve of the Conservative Party conference where Mrs Badenoch will warn her party it needs to gear up for a potential snap election within months.

On Friday she said a massive prison-building programme was the only way to end Labour's 'reckless' early-release scheme. 

'A violent criminal doesn't become less dangerous just because the Government has run out of prison cells,' she said.

'Labour cancelled our plans to rent spaces abroad and now they are stuck. Their answer is to let dangerous offenders out even earlier instead of building the prison spaces we need.

'The first duty of government is to keep law-abiding people safe. Full prisons are a reason to build more cells, not release more criminals onto our streets.'

The Tory prisons programme will be funded mainly by cuts to foreign aid. The Conservatives had already pledged to slash international development from 0.44 per cent of GDP to 0.1 per cent.

Under the party's new plan it will be cut to just £1billion a year, saving a further £2.5billion. Last year, Britain spent £13.1billion on overseas aid.

Another £1billion will be cut from the budget of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, partly by reversing £700million in planned increases under Labour. 

A further £500million will be trimmed from the Cabinet Office's spendings on communications consultants, which Tory sources said included 'highly questionable spending on social media influencers' to promote Labour initiatives.

In total, the cuts are designed to generate £4.2billion a year in savings. Half of this will be used to pay down the deficit under the Tories' 'golden rule' on fiscal sustainability. 

The rest will be used to fund the biggest prison-building programme since the mid-19th century.

A review will be launched later this year to look at potential sites. Many of the places will be delivered by expanding existing jails, but others will be built on new sites as part of a seven-year construction programme.

Mr Timothy said a future Tory government would legislate to speed up the planning process, which has led to previous expansion programmes being delayed.

Labour Party chairman Bridget Phillipson said: 'These proposals are just not credible from a party who left our criminal justice system at breaking point.'

• READ MORE: 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'