Training 800 community counsellors to staff food banks and offer legal and other advice is among the more eye-catching proposals in Ukip’s 2015 general election manifesto, published this morning. 

The party also wants independent lay oversight of family courts, and a requirement that people attending faith-based tribunals must be told that they cannot be forced to attend and that rulings may not be legally binding.

In a section on crime and justice, Ukip pledges to ‘bring our British legal system back under British control’.

The UK would ‘leave the EU to prevent those with criminal convictions from coming here’. The party would repeal Labour’s human rights legislation and withdraw from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights – the Supreme Court would be the ‘final authority’ on human rights matters.

UKIP would reverse the opt-in to EU law and justice measures ‘which disregard the fundamental principle of innocent until proven guilty’.

UKIP plans to streamline the police service and redirect resources by cutting the number of territorial constabularies.

The party believes ‘it is time for a review of what is and what is not a criminal offence’. The emphasis of such a review ‘is likely to be on up-to-date sentencing procedures and processes for internet/cyber crime, sexual crime relating to minors, fraud, aggression, intimidation, people trafficking and gang masters, and drug and substance abuse’.

On family courts, Ukip says lay oversight is needed to ‘ensure confidentiality does not prevent proper scrutiny’.