Badenoch says Tories could quit more treaties to achieve deportation 'goals'

A future Conservative government would be open to dismantling more treaties as a means to deport people from the UK, Kemi Badenoch has said at the start of a Tory conference focused almost exclusively on immigration policy.

- Peter Walker Senior political correspondent

Making the first of two addresses to the gathering in Manchester, the Tory leader set out her proposal for the UK to quit the European convention on human rights (ECHR) as part of a wider bonfire of protections including an end to legal aid for migrants and the right to take migration decisions to tribunals or judicial review.

A future Conservative government would be open to the possibility of amending or quitting other international agreements, she said, opening the possibility of the UK leaving the UN's 1951 refugee convention.

Leaving the ECHR "is a necessary step, but not enough on its own to achieve our goals", Badenoch said. "If there are other treaties and laws we need to revise or revisit, then we will do so. And we will do so in the same calm and responsible way."

The plan to leave the ECHR was announced just before the conference as part of a radical and sometimes draconian package of anti-migration measures including a pledge that all asylum seekers arriving by unofficial means would be sent to their own or a third country within a week.