Last week my sister left her house in Nottingham to find that her car had been doused with paint stripper. Another friend had her handbag snatched on her way back from work. My car has been broken into six times in three years in a quiet leafy suburban road.

How many women have walked home alone in the dark and felt a chill at the thought of being followed; how many have worried late at night when a friend didn’t text to say that she got back safely?

This may not be Cape Town or Karachi, but are these the signs of a country at peace on its streets?

That’s why I couldn’t agree more with Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, who caused outrage when she admitted in an interview in these pages last week that she felt too scared to wander alone after dark.

Asked whether she would feel safe walking the streets in Hackney, east London, she was alarmed: “No, why would I do that?” What about Kensington and Chelsea? “No. But I would never have done, at any point in my life. I just don’t think it’s a thing people do. I wouldn’t walk around at midnight.”

For a brief moment she had dropped the politician’s patter about statistics and falling crime rates and had spoken instinctively, as a woman, from the heart. It was significant that she had let her guard down with a female journalist. Women have a camaraderie when it comes to safety: you’d be mad to risk it, right?

Smith claimed that people are “safer, in terms of crime, than 10 years ago”. I’d like to know exactly which figures she was quoting because that has not been my experience, nor that of all my friends and relatives. I felt safer backpacking solo around southeast Asia than I do going home late by myself in England.

Conveniently, the government published official figures this month showing a drop in recorded crime. But a YouGov survey in August reported that 46% of Londoners said they did not feel safe in their own neighbourhoods at night. And it’s not just after dark. A surprising 15% did not feel confident in their own areas “at any time”. It’s a similar story outside the capital.

For ordinary people in ordinary areas, incidents of petty crimes, muggings and attacks are an everyday occurrence; they may not be violent murders, but it adds to a creeping sense of lawlessness. No wonder only a quarter of people say they feel confident that the government really is cracking down on crime.

It’s a subject that’s close to my heart. In the summer of 2000 I was living in Oval, south London, and working as a sales rep in Staines, Surrey. I had been at the office late and by the time I had driven home it was almost dark. My phone had been ringing, so I parked under a street lamp on the main road outside my flat to check my messages.

I heard a clunk and before I knew what was happening, a man was sitting beside me in the passenger seat, had grabbed my left hand, still gripping my mobile, and pulled me towards him. I went into shock, I wanted to scream but couldn’t utter a sound. We grappled and with my free right hand I fumbled for the car door. I fell into the path of oncoming traffic and tried to call out for help, but I was still too stunned to talk.

Commuters were briskly walking by, heading home, no one stopped to help. My attacker calmly took my leather jacket, handbag and phone and sauntered down the street.

Even though I escaped unhurt the incident affected me deeply. For the six months that I continued to live there I would call my flatmates and find any excuse to get them to walk me the 10 yards from my car to our front door. Could they help me with the shopping? Could they check there was a parking space? I was 30 years old and overnight I had lost my independence.

Since I no longer felt safe in my own car I certainly didn’t feel all right about walking anywhere alone. I don’t scare easily, as anyone who saw me on The Apprentice will know, but it took me two years to get over the feeling of constant paranoia.

I was angry that the experience had made me feel like a different person and angrier still that my attacker knew he could rob me with such impunity that he didn’t even bother to run away. It was only when I took a year to go travelling by myself around China, Thailand and the Philippines that I felt my confidence return.

British Muslims are criticised for protecting and chaperoning their women. England is so proud of its liberal values and yet here am I at 37, a supposedly westernised Muslim born and raised in Nottingham, and my husband still collects me from the Tube station; I ask male friends to walk me home from the pub. Is there a difference?

Ask any woman. We all have ruses to make sure that we feel safe at night. I text my husband throughout the evening if I’m out alone to tell him where I am.

Even my mother, who was born in Kashmir and didn’t have the slightest worry when I set off to play in the streets and parks of Nottingham in the 1970s, will now always ask me how I’m getting home. My friends and I never leave each other’s houses without promising to text when we’re back safely. If no message arrives I start imagining scenes from Crimewatch.

Am I overreacting? My instincts – and clearly those of our first female home secretary – tell us otherwise. Smith admits she’s “fortunate” that she doesn’t need to travel alone. It would cost me £40 in a taxi from central London to my house in Chiswick, west London. For the vast majority of women public transport is the only option.

I’m all for Big Brother Britain. We need to improve visibility: more CCTV in Tube stations and on train platforms, more police on the streets, more bus conductors. It may cost public money but surely it’s worth it.

That’s why I am returning to Nottingham to file a report for ITV’s Tonight (tomorrow, 8pm) about female safety on the streets. How will those girls who stand shivering in the nightclub queue get home on a Friday and Saturday night? How many people have been attacked or mugged or know someone who has? I’ll be interested to discover the truth behind those government crime rates because I, like the home secretary, sense fear on our streets and it’s got to stop. It’s in your hands, Jacqui.

Saira Khan was talking to

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