Conservatives pledge to remove 750,000 migrants under borders plan

London - The Conservatives - the main opposition party in the British parliament- has said  they would remove 750,000 illegal immigrants from the UK within five years if they win the next election.

The party has pledged to ban people who enter the UK without permission from ever claiming asylum.

It would also prevent those whose claims are rejected from challenging decisions in the courts, with appeals instead handled by Home Office officials.

Border officials would be instructed to remove people "within hours or at most a few days", the Tories said, with a reformed "Removals Force" unit seeing their funding doubled to £1.6bn per year.

The party earlier said it would end the UK's 75-year membership of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in a bid to thwart asylum appeals, confirming a widely-expected policy shift.

Under the latest proposals, the Home Office's immigration enforcement unit would be rebranded as a "Removals Force" and given wider-ranging powers, along with an extra £820m per year. The party said the money would be available 'by closing asylum hotels.'

The party says it would give the new unit a "mandate" to remove at least 150,000 people each year, totalling 750,000 during the five-year lifetime of a Parliament.

This would include people currently living in the UK illegally, the party says, as well as future illegal arrivals and all foreign nationals convicted of a crime more serious than minor parking or speeding offences, reports said.

It would represent around a five-fold increase from the 35,000 migrants who were removed from the UK over the last year - the majority of whom went voluntarily.

The Conservatives' plan comes after Reform UK made similar pledges over the summer to take the UK out of the ECHR and deport 600,000 migrants within five years if it won power.

The ruling Labour party has also pledged tougher action to deal with small boat crossings over the English Channel, which are set to break record numbers this year.

Labour recently set out plans to lengthen refugees' route to permanent settlement in the UK in a bid to make the country less appealing to migrants, and has negotiated a "one in, one out" pilot scheme with France.