Human Rights Act should be called 'criminal rights act', Suella Braverman suggests

ITV News' Deputy Political Editor Anushka Asthana reports from the Conservative Party Conference

Suella Braverman has suggested the Human Rights Act should have been called the "criminal rights act" in a passionate anti-immigration speech at the Conservative Party Conference.

The home secretary was the first minister to entirely pack the hall with supporters for her keynote speech in which she blamed the Labour Party for the small boats crisis.

“Our country has become enmeshed in a dense net of international rules that were designed for another era. And it is Labour that turbocharged their impact by passing the misnamed Human Rights Act," she told party members.

“I’m surprised they didn’t call it the ‘Criminal Rights Act’.”

In a bid to discourage the public from voting Labour, she said "the future could bring millions more migrants to these shores, uncontrolled and unmanageable unless the government they elect next year acts decisively to stop that happening".

But Labour hit out at the current administration's ability to curb small boat arrivals, with the latest figures revealing more than 1,000 migrants have illegally arrived in the UK since the start of the conference on Saturday.

Shadow immigration minister Stephen Kinnock earlier said that shows "once again that nothing Rishi Sunak or Suella Braverman have done has made the slightest difference".

The total number of small boat arrivals so far this year is around 23% below the equivalent number at this point last year, but Mr Kinnock said the number is "entirely dictated by weather conditions in the Channel".

Most of Ms Braverman's speech was used to highlight issues the Conservative Party wants to fight, such as so-called "wokeism", rising crime and illegal immigration - and to say Labour is responsible.

She said the public "will get to decide if they want to curb woke with Rishi Sunak or let it run riot with Kier take-the-knee Starmer".

She said the Conservative Party is a “kind of trade union” saying: “We are the trade union of the British people.”

Ending her speech she said: “We stand with the many, the law-abiding, hard-working common-sense majority, against the few, the privileged woke minority with their luxury beliefs who wield influence out of proportion to their numbers."

Most of the crowd lapped up her speech, giving rapturous applause at every opportunity, other than one man who was escorted from the auditorium for heckling.

The heckler was Andrew Boff, the Tory chair of the London Assembly who said he's been in the Conservative Party for 50 years.

“This Home Secretary was basically vilifying gay people and trans people by this attack on LGBT ideology, or gender ideology. It is fictitious, it is ridiculous," he told the PA news agency.

“It is a signal to people who don’t like people who are LGBT+ people.”

He added: “Words like that in the forum of the party that I love need to be challenged.”

Speaking to reporters as he was led from the conference centre, he hit out at “trash” the Home Secetary was saying about “gender ideology”.

“It is making our Conservative Party look transphobic and homophobic.

“Our party has a proud record of standing up for LGBT+ rights and she is destroying it.”