SWEEPING new curbs on the appeal rights of illegal migrants, foreign prisoners and others facing deportation are to be announced by the home secretary.

Theresa May is to tell the Conservative party conference that the appeals of thousands facing deportation can only be heard after they have been put on a plane home unless they face “a risk of irreversible harm”.

The move is to be part of a sweeping new immigration bill, expected to be published next week, designed to create “a hostile environment” to illegal migrants in Britain. It will detail new measures to ensure private landlords check on the immigration status of tenants and curb access to healthcare for illegal migrants.

The home secretary is also expected to cut the number of grounds on which migrants can lodge an appeal against deportation from the current 17 to just four. A right of appeal is expected to exist only where the decision is said to be “complex and fact-specific”.

She is also to confirm that guidance to the courts to limit their use of the “right to family life” article 8 of the European convention on human rights will be included in primary legislation to ensure it cannot be ignored.

The package follows a review of deportation procedures in the aftermath of the 12-year legal battle to send the radical Islamist cleric Abu Qatada back to Jordan to face a retrial for terror offences. Guarantees have been given that torture-based evidence will not be used against him.

The Home Office estimates that the curb on the appeal rights of those facing deportation could halve the 68,000 cases lodged against the government every year.

May told the Daily Mail in advance of Monday afternoon’s conference speech: “The Abu Qatada case proved that we need a dramatic change in our human rights law. We’re going to cut the number of appeal rights, extend cases where we deport first and hear the appeal later, and use primary legislation to make sure judges interpret the ‘right to family life’ properly.”

Home secretaries already have the power to insist that those facing deportation can only launch an appeal once they have already been put on the plane but only in cases which have been certified as “manifestly unfounded”.

These so-called “non-suspensive” appeals were introduced to prevent the last-minute appeal being used as a way of suspending the deportation process with nobody able to be put on a plane until every legal avenue had been exhausted. It now appears that May intends to introduce a massive extension of this principle to deny the right of appeal while in Britain to more than 30,000 illegal migrants, foreign national criminals and rejected asylum seekers.

It appears that the only exceptions will be those who face “a risk of serious irreversible harm” if they are sent back to face possible torture or execution. This is a narrower test than the current human rights protections, which include the right to a fair trial not based on torture-obtained evidence, such as in the Abu Qatada case.

The justice secretary, Chris Grayling, is to confirm that the Conservatives want to go into the next election committed to repealing the Human Rights Act and replacing it with a British bill of rights. He is to tell the party conference that the European court of human rights has been a “big international frustration”.

David Cameron hinted on Sunday that the process could end in Britain withdrawing from the European convention on human rights.

By arrangement with the Guardian