MICHAEL Howard launched a strong appeal to Britain's "forgotten majority" at the Scottish Tory conference yesterday.

The Conservative leader, adapting former US president Richard Nixon's famous political slogan from 1969, about representing the "great silent majority", threatened to abolish what he called Tony Blair's "charter for chancers", the Human Rights Act, and launched a sustained attack on Scotland's Labour establishment.

He told the conference in Dumfries that for the first time in years, the Tories were "in a position to restore principle to government, to stand up for common sense and to put people's priorities first". He said they had made the political running with policies rooted in "decent, common sense - school discipline, lower taxes, cleaner hospitals, controlled immigration and more police".

He said the Conservatives' values "are the values of the forgotten majority, the people who make up the backbone of our country but have been neglected by Mr Blair's government".

Citing his own upbringing in South Wales, he said of Scotland: "Wherever Labour have been in power the same rot sets in. Scottish Labour has exercised power for generations in many parts of Scotland where people live in conditions of quiet desperation.

"It is the party of urban deprivation, of spiralling waiting lists and low life expectancy, and of an establishment that needs to be held to account."

He also turned to themes that have made Labour nervous, attacking travellers who defy the law and failed asylum seekers who were not removed from the country, and made a sustained attack on the Human Rights Act and what he called the "rights culture".

He said: "It is turning common sense on its head, it's undermining Britain's sense of fair play, and it's eating away at our tradition of tolerance. 'I've got my rights' has become the verbal equivalent of two fingers to authority."

Citing a series of high profile cases north and south of the border where prisoners had won early release or compensation under the act, Mr Howard said to cries of "hear, hear": "Laws are there to punish criminals, not to help them get out of jail or get rich quick.

Mr Blair's Human Rights Act has become the law which rewards the law-breakers. It has become a charter for chancers and makes a mockery of justice."

He cited Lord McCluskey's view that the act had established "a field day for crackpots, a pain in the neck for judges and legislators and a goldmine for lawyers", adding:

"That is why the Conservative Party is reviewing Mr Blair's Human Rights Act and if it can't be improved it will be scrapped.

"I am determined to ensure that the rights of those who play by the rules are respected, that the scales of justice are rebalanced and fair play returns to the justice system."

He also contrasted the act's political correctness with the government's "human rights abuses" - the erosion of trial by jury and detention without trial.