Michael Howard will today commit the next Conservative government to ending Britain's international obligation to take unlimited numbers of asylum seekers and refugees.

In a keynote speech the Tory leader will say that a new annual limit on the number of immigrants is essential.

Yesterday he signed a full-page party advertisement in the Sunday Telegraph to promote his party's policy of quotas on migrants.

"Some people say this is racist. It's not. It is common sense," he argued.

Howard said Britain had reached "a turning point" and that without any debate the country was being forced to accommodate 165,000 migrants a year, the equivalent of a town the size of Peterborough.

Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, accused the Tory leader of basing his policy on "the ill-informed propaganda of some of the more demented anti-immigration groups".

Charles Kennedy, interviewed on Breakfast with Frost, said: "It is another indication of the desperation within the Conservative Party as the general election looms large."

Meanwhile, the Guardian claims that Charles Clarke is set to publish tough plans to speed up removals of failed asylum seekers and restrict the number of migrant dependants arriving in Britain.