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Question: What are your priorities for 2008?

Eagle: A lot of it is about ensuring that the prison service and the probation service are running properly and concentrating on the prison building programme.

I am ministerial champion for women in prison so implementing reforms is also a priority.

I am also minister for the courts service so we will be focused on modernising and rebuilding some of the courts estate.

We also have the mental health review which Keith Bradley is doing. There are a lot of issues around prisoners, drugs, prisoners and mental health and we have to make sure we are treating people properly.

Question: Is the fact that you are having to build more prisons a sign of failure on one level?

Eagle: We have to accommodate the number of people sentenced to prison whether that is by judges or magistrates. It is a fundamental part of government that you do that so we have to make sure we have got the places.

Having said that, the main focus of our efforts when it comes to prison is to reduce re-offending. If you have a look at the actual figures we have reduced re-offending - it's down 6.9 per cent since this government came to office. That is still too high and there's more that we can do.

If you look at the problems people in prison have, they have vulnerabilities and issues. Quite often they are not particularly literate and so there are some basic skills issues. There are also issues about substance abuse, issues about mental health, so if we can tackle those and give people hope when they come out and try and tackle the issue of the stigma of being an ex-prisoner then we can make real inroads into that re-offending rate and do more than we already have.

Question: How does the Labour Party get over its recent problems and move forward in 2008?

Eagle: We have to carry on governing, meet the promises we have made and show we can do a good job. A lot of the travails that are supposedly besetting the Labour government are certainly not the things people raise with me when I am out and about in Liverpool. I haven't had a stream of angry people raising the sort of things you read in the papers.

There is going to be some time between now and the next election and we have to make sure that we are focused on delivering our promises. We also have to highlight the fact that when it comes down to it the Conservatives talk mainly about tittle tattle, there is no policy.

When it comes down to it, when people in this country come to vote they are going to be thinking about economics, about who is going to make them better off, who will make sure they are still in a job and will make sure the schools and hospitals are good and at the moment there is only one answer to those questions and that is Labour.

So this year we have to keep our nerve, have confidence that we can go on dealing with the real issues and the events that can hit any government and get on with the job and I think we can do that.