Tory leadership hopefuls traded blows over immigration, with Robert Jenrick’s key pledge to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) dismissed as an attempt to provide “easy answers” by his rival Kemi Badenoch.

Shadow home secretary James Cleverly also suggested that promising to leave the ECHR was offering “soundbites and quick fixes” rather than working to resolve a complex issue.

Mr Jenrick believes the UK must leave the ECHR, and the Strasbourg court which rules on it, to make it easier to remove people who arrive in small boats across the English Channel.

He also wants an end to mass legal migration, with a binding cap to bring it down to the tens of thousands “or less”.

But Mrs Badenoch, the bookmakers’ favourite to replace Rishi Sunak as Tory leader, said: “People who are throwing out numbers, saying we’ll leave the ECHR and so on, are giving you easy answers.

“That’s how we got in this mess in the first place.”

Mr Jenrick, who quit Mr Sunak’s government after pushing for tougher measures over the Rwanda asylum scheme, is seen as Mrs Badenoch’s closest rival for the job.

All the candidates know that immigration is a key battleground as the party attempts to win back voters from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

Mrs Badenoch has said the previous government’s mistake was that it “talked right but governed left, sounding like Conservatives but acting like Labour”.

She said that Labour are only in Government because people no longer believed in the Conservatives.

“The British people are yearning for something better, and this Labour Government is not it,” she said at her campaign launch event in London.

She said Labour is “trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public” about the state of the UK’s finances.

“They are already making worse mistakes than we did,” she said.

Mrs Badenoch also hit back at criticisms that she was more concerned with culture wars than with the bread and butter of opposition.

“I was the equalities minister, I had to look after very, very tricky issues like race and gender – things that everybody ran away from,” she said.

“I didn’t run away. And not only did I not run away, I defended people who needed help, and I dragged Labour onto our turf.”

Shortly after Mrs Badenoch’s launch event, where she received public backing from shadow energy secretary Claire Coutinho, Mr Cleverly spoke at the Old War Office, introduced by former defence secretary Grant Shapps, who lost his seat as the Tories were swept from power in July’s Labour landslide.

He declined to back leaving the ECHR, arguing it was the UK Supreme Court which had ultimately prevented flights taking off to Rwanda rather than Strasbourg judges.

“The simple fact is that if we try to grab shorthand answers and quick fixes, the British people will look at us and say ‘we’ve heard that before’.

“We need to be honest and open. We need to show where things are difficult and how they can be achieved.

“This is why those small number of voluntary asylum seekers went to Rwanda, because the Supreme Court’s argument was that Rwanda was inherently dangerous for asylum seekers. I was building an evidence base with asylum seekers in Rwanda to prove that was not the case.

“That is how we would have defeated the Supreme Court. That’s how we would have got the flights off the ground. Not by soundbites or quick fixes but by graft, but by delivery and focus. This is what we have to do to regain credibility and get back into government.”

Conservative leadership bid
Robert Jenrick believes the UK must pull out of the European Convention on Human Rights (Aaron Chown/PA)

The field of six candidates – which also includes Tom Tugendhat, Dame Priti Patel and Mel Stride – will be whittled down to four by the time of the Conservative conference at the end of the month.

After that, MPs will carry out further rounds of voting to select two final candidates for the Conservative members to choose between, with the result announced on November 2.

There are 121 Tory MPs and sources in M Jenrick’s campaign said they will get the 41 votes needed to guarantee finishing in the top two.

A Jenrick campaign source said they were “very confident as a team that we have an absolutely nailed-on route to get 41 votes and get into the final two” with a “broad coalition of support” from MPs across the party, from centrist moderates to the Conservative right.