Tories pledge cut number of immigrants coming into Britain

The Shadow Home Secretary vowed to shut Labour's open door policy which is swelling the population by nearly 200,000 a year.

Britain, he said, is 'letting in too many people who shouldn't be here and slamming the door on those we should be helping'.

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In a conference speech that will reassure traditional Tories, he also pledged to increase the number of jail places, scrap the controversial early release of prisoners and create a force to patrol Britain's borders.

Other policy initiatives included forcing drug addicts to go 'cold turkey', and allowing the police to reclaim the streets by spending more time on the beat and less time filling in forms.

He also pledged to tackle social breakdown and reverse Mr Brown's "perverse priority that puts murderers and violent criminals on the streets and puts the public at risk".

Mr Davis unveiled a raft of measures aimed at wooing the party's core voters ahead of a possible general election while rebuffing Gordon Brown's incursion into traditional Tory territory.

He said Mr Brown was 'in denial' over spiralling crime and immigration, and ' concealed, rather than confronted' problems.

Central to the speech was the promise not to allow 'unchecked immigration', which he said left housing, schools and communities struggling to cope.

Mr Davis said the Tories would set an annual limit on the number of people from outside the EU coming to work in Britain.

It would be 'substantially lower' than the 200,000 a year, including people from Australia, the Far East and Africa, currently coming here.

He refused to name a figure though experts predict the Tories would block at least 50,000 immigrants each year.

Illegal immigration and drug smuggling would be tackled by a dedicated Border Police Force, merging seven different organisations.

The Conservatives also pledged to end the early release scheme which will free 25,000 prisoners this year to ease overcrowding.

Under the programme, some 6,000 prisoners have so far been released early and at least 100 have committed new crimes.

Instead, the Tories will scrap the ID card scheme to fund 1,200 extra jail places by building a number pre-fabricated cells, which hold 40 inmates each, in prison yards.

Tough new proposals to tackle drug crime would force addicts to 'cold turkey'.

Instead of being given methadone to wean them off hard drugs, junkies would be ordered to abstain completely in residential homes or day centres run by specialists.

Mr Davis said Labour's approach to drug rehabilitation was to spend taxpayers' money trying to manage addiction. "That means keeping addicts on drugs," he said.

"We want to get addicts off drugs."