The Conservative Party will unveil plans today for a new police force to secure Britain’s borders as part of plans to tackle illegal immigration.

The 10,000-strong force would be given full police powers to locate and deport those not entitled to stay in Britain and pursue people-traffickers across the world, David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, is expected to announce.

Mr Davis will present the interim findings of a task force led by Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, the former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, to the party’s conference.

The peer – who also advises Gordon Brown on counter-terrorism issues - is understood to have said that the Government’s own proposals for a border police force do not go far enough.

Mr Brown announced in July that officers from the Immigration Service, Revenue & Customs and UKvisas, which issues British visas, are to be combined into a single service.

But the new body would not include any police officers and would lack the power and capability needed to seal the country’s “porous” border, Mr Davis is expected to say in a speech that will also contain outlines of new policies aimed at reducing drug use and crime.

Setting up the Stevens task force earlier this year, David Cameron said that the border police force would be a more effective way of tackling illegal immigration than ID cards. “We are going to take a completely different approach. Instead of ID cards we believe the right approach is to have a fully integrated border police force that will have one clear focus – enhancing the security of our country.”

Damian Green, the Shadow Immigration Minister, said that the new force would be fundamental in bringing down levels of immigration that had become “extremely unbalanced”.

“We can’t go on like this, we can’t carry on with net migration running at the best part of 200,000,” Mr Green told a fringe meeting at Blackpool yesterday. He added that setting a firm quota for non-EU migrants had become necessary to protect public services and to help to ensure that integration occured in a “calm and orderly manner”.

“The limit will be substantially lower [than the current net migration figures] because things have got extremely unbalanced,” he said. “We think that protecting our borders is fundamental, and if you can’t do that then it doesn’t matter what policy you have, it won’t work.”

The mobilisation of immigration as a campaigning issue in the forthcoming election divides those at the heart of Mr Cameron’s leadership.

George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, dismissed as “über-modernis-ers” those who believe that highlighting an issue of concern to the party’s “core vote” undermined efforts to convince others that the party has changed in recent years.

Mr Green defended his party’s focus on the subject yesterday, saying that it was an issue of concern to all people in Britain, not just traditional Tory supporters.

“The Conservative attitude is that it is not fair on the communities concerned, nor is it fair on the hard-work-ing immigrants who should not be blamed for failures of Government policy,” he said.

Mr Green said that he had recently visited a primary school in Boston, Lincolnshire, where more than 50 per cent of the reception year intake did not speak English. “It is extremely difficult to run a school effectively in those circumstances,” he said.

Baroness Warsi, the party’s community cohesion spokesman, was criticised at the weekend for saying that the issue of immigration should not be left to parties like the BNP. She said that it was necessary for all political parties to debate the issue.

Today’s agenda

9.45-11am

National and international security debate including William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, Liam Fox, the Shadow Defence Secretary, and Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, the Shadow Security Minister and national security adviser to the Leader of the Opposition

11.15am-12.30pm

Globalisation and global poverty debate including Andrew Mitchell, the Shadow International Development Secretary

2.30-4pm

Fixing our broken society including David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary

4pm-5pm

Rebuilding democracy including Nick Herbert, the Shadow Justice Secretary, and Ken Clarke, chairman of the Democracy Task Force

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