Suella Braverman conference speech: What Home Secretary said

London Assembly member Andrew Boff was escorted out after attempting to shout Ms Braverman down for her comments about the LGBTQ+ community.

He told the PA news agency: "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.

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

Here are the key points from the Home Secretary's speech.

Read More: Conservative Conference: Michael Gove insists 'nationalism in retreat in Scotland'

Immigration

Unsurprisingly, the Home Secretary devoted much of her speech to discussing immigration and asylum seekers.

Ms Braverman is herself the daughter of immigrants from Mauritius and Kenya who came to Britain in the 1960s.

She said: "One key factor reshaping our world is unprecedented mass migration.

"The wind of change that carried my own parents across the globe in the 20th century, was a mere gust compared to the hurricane that is coming.

"Today the option of moving from a poorer country to a richer one is not just a dream for billions of people, it's an entirely realistic prospect."

Most asylum claims in the UK are successful – in 2021, the estimated overall grant rate where a final outcome has been reached was 77 per cent.

Travelling to another country to seek asylum is not illegal and is protected under international law. Speaking of which...

Human Rights Act

Ms Braverman said: "(The public) know another thing, that 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.

"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.

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

The Human Rights Act (1998) enshrined into British law the rights contained in the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Conservative government has been hostile to the Act, and to the ECHR - which is a separate body to the European Union - which has blocked deportations of asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Ms Braverman has contended that having to abide by the ECHR means the UK is unable to effectively manage its domestic affairs, though supporters of the Act argue that its repeal would be in breach of the Good Friday Agreement and could lead to the withdrawal of the EU from international law enforcement and judicial cooperation matters.

The only other countries in the region not signed up to the ECHR are Belarus and Russia, which was expelled following the invasion of Ukraine.

Read More: Tory conference: Four things we learned from Michael Gove's speech

War on woke

Inevitably, there was plenty of talk about the "woke".

Ms Braverman said the British people faced a choice over whether to "curb woke" with Rishi Sunak or "let it run riot with Kier take-the-knee Starmer".

Taking the knee has been used as a non-violent means of highlighting racial injustice in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.

It originated with NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who opted to kneel during the U.S national anthem to highlight police mistreatment of ethnic minorities.

Mr Sunak has previously said he had "enormous respect" for those taking part in non-violent action during the Black Lives Matter protest.

Ms Braverman 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."

Name changes

Ms Braverman also pledged to introduce legislation to prevent sex offenders from changing their names to avoid detection.

She said: "We will bring forward legislation to prevent registered sex offenders from changing their identities.

"We will work to strengthen background checks so that they can catch undisclosed changes of identity."

Ms Braverman further said she didn't care if this breached the human rights of people on the sex offenders' register, continuing: "Its time to worry less about the rights of sexual predators and more about the rights of victims."

Sex offenders are already required to inform the authorities of any changes in their personal details but campaigners say this doesn't go far enough as it puts the onus on the offender to comply.

There are around 67,000 registered sex offenders in Britain, with the BBC reporting that 729 had gone missing or were wanted for arrest between 2019 and 2021.

Racism

Ms Braverman also accused her political opponents of characterising attempts at immigration reform as racist.

She said: "They’ve always used that smear. They tried it against Margaret Thatcher, it didn’t work. They tried it against David Cameron, it didn’t work.

"A couple of years ago they even tried it against Winston Churchill, our greatest ever leader… And it didn’t work then either.

And I can promise you this, it won’t work against Rishi Sunak and it won’t work against me."

Mr Churchill's statue outside of parliament spray painted during the aforementioned Black Lives Matter protests due to his comments on race, which was considered extreme even by many of his contemporaries.

The former Prime Minister described the white race as "a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race" than Native Americans and Australian Aboriginals, advocated the use of poison gas "against uncivilised tribes", in reference to Kurds and Afghans.

However, some historians have contended that Mr Churchill evolved his positions over the course of his life.

Richard Toye, author of Churchill's Empire said in 2021: "Although Churchill did think that white people were superior, that didn't mean he necessarily thought it was OK to treat non-white people in an inhumane way."