The problem: Crime, homelessness and insecurity now threaten the very fabric of British society. Many people feel too frightened to leave their homes. Many do not have a decent home. Our country is becoming more and more divided, our sense of community is being lost and our shared values are being undermined.

Our commitment: Liberal Democrats will pursue practical measures to rebuild Britain's communities, tackle the causes of crime, reduce homelessness and make people safer in their homes and on the streets.
 
Our priorities are to:

• Put 3,000 more police officers on the beat.
• Build more affordable and secure housing.
• End, by the year 2000, the scandal of people being forced to sleep rough on the streets.
• Revive Britain's sense of community.

We will:

• Build more houses. We will encourage partnerships between the public sector, the private sector and housing associations to build high quality homes to rent and buy. We will, within strict borrowing controls, give local authorities more powers to go directly to the market to raise finance for building new homes. We will begin the phased release of capital receipts from past sales of Council houses and allow the money to be used to build new homes.
• Give financial security to all, whether they rent or own their homes. We will introduce a new Mortgage Benefit for first time buyers. They will receive this instead of Mortgage Interest Tax Relief. Those holding current mortgages will retain Mortgage Interest Tax Relief. Our aim is, over time, to merge the new Mortgage Benefit and the current Housing Benefit into one system of housing cost relief, available to those who buy or rent and focused on those most in need.
• End the scandal of people being forced to sleep rough on the streets. We will ensure that by the year 2000 no one is forced to sleep on the streets. We will require every Council to set up self-funding rent deposit schemes to help homeless people take up private tenancies. We will fund more short-stay hostel places as the first rung on the ladder to permanent accommodation.
• Take action to tackle homelessness and raise housing standards. We will give Councils greater power to act on unfit private housing, where the landlord has failed to do so. We will strengthen tenants' rights to repair and, in the public sector, give them rights to take part in the management and development of their homes and estates. Our Empty Homes Strategy will enable local authorities to work with, and as a last resort require, landlords to bring empty properties back into use. We will end discrimination against those under 25 by scrapping the 'shared residency rule' when assessing housing benefit.
• Bring confidence back to the housing market by targeting low inflation and low interest rates.

We will:

• Put 3,000 more police officers on the beat. Within one year, we will give police authorities the resources to put an extra 3,000 police officers on the beat. We will increase the time the police spend on preventing and detecting crime by reducing unnecessary paperwork and making greater use of new technologies.
• Tackle youth crime. We will widen the use of schemes that require offenders to repay their debt to society and to confront the consequences of their actions. We will, where appropriate, require parents to participate in support projects where their children have been involved in juvenile crime. We will develop schemes that target disruptive children from an early age. We will reserve custodial sentences for more serious and persistent offenders. Our voluntary Citizens Service will enable young people to get directly involved in crime prevention schemes.
• Strengthen the criminal justice system. We will make the justice system work more quickly and effectively and review sentencing policy. We will overhaul the Crown Prosecution Service. We will encourage the use of community sentences, as an alternative to prison, where the result is likely to be less reoffending, and use prison sentences where they are essential to public protection or to make punishment effective. We will concentrate resources on crime prevention and on increasing conviction rates, rather than spending billions on building prisons.
• Focus on crime prevention. We will require Councils to take the lead in establishing cross-community partnerships against crime, setting specific targets for crime prevention. We will give Councils powers and resources to support high-quality, targeted crime prevention initiatives.
• Wage war on drug abuse. We will give the Police and Customs and Excise the support they need to stop drugs coming into Britain. We will set up a Royal Commission charged with developing policies to tackle the drugs problem at its roots.
• Give victims a new deal. We will promote restorative justice, under which offenders can be required to compensate victims for the damage they have caused. We will ensure that the Victim Support movement and the Witness Support schemes play a full role in the criminal justice system. We will provide victims with the practical support they need to prevent repeat attacks.
• Strengthen public confidence in the police. We will make police authorities more responsive to local communities by increasing their elected membership and creating an accountable police authority for London. We will improve co-operation between police forces and work more closely with Britain's European partners to combat international crime, terrorism, drug trafficking and fraud. We will ensure that the police take further steps to reduce the level of racial and homophobic violence.

We will:

• Seek further reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). We will work to replace theCAP, which currently subsidises production, with Countryside Management Contracts - a targeted system of direct payments to support economic, social and environmental goals in rural communities. Countryside Management Contracts will enable farmers and landowners to choose from a wide range of options, for example, to improve the rural environment, maximise food quality, protect natural habitats or move to less intensive or organic farming methods.
• Help rural economies through a period of change. We will, in partnership with the agriculture industry, draw up a national strategy for farming in order to provide a framework for public policy and private decision-making over the next 10 years. We will promote agricultural research and development, and assist farmers wishing to diversify. We will promote local processing of agricultural products and expand support for small and medium-sized enterprises in rural areas.
• Tackle rural crime. We will put more police into rural areas, support Farm and Neighbourhood Watch schemes and give Councils the duty to set up crime prevention schemes with the local police. We will enable rural police authorities to introduce mortgage incentive schemes to encourage rural beat officers to live in the areas they serve.
• Enhance rural services. We will support smaller village schools through greater use of information technology and specialist teaching teams. We will encourage schemes that enable local communities to make use of school buildings and equipment. We will promote community hospitals and use them for more out-patient consultations.
• Provide more affordable rural housing. We will encourage housing authorities, Parish Councils and housing associations to set up partnership schemes with the private sector in order to build low-cost homes for first-time home buyers and social needs.
• Improve rural transport. We will give local authorities the power to improve the co-ordination of local bus services and to reopen closed railway stations, in co-operation with Railtrack.
• Strengthen the network of rural sub-post offices and village shops. We will encourage the Post Office to invest in new point of sale technologies, in order to provide access, through sub-post offices, to a wide range of customer services. Where post offices and village shops which are vital to their local community are threatened, we will enable local Councils to support them with up to 100 per cent rate relief.
• Protect the countryside. We will help landowners meet the environmental costs of increased access to the countryside. We will take action to reduce the use of chemicals in farming.
• Protect rural areas from urbanisation. We will penalise the use of greenfield sites, set and enforce targets for greater use of brownland sites and encourage over-the-shop accommodation in market town centres. We will review the excessive housing totals in the current structure plans and scrap the 'predict and provide' approach to housing development.
• Work to preserve fish stocks and protect the livelihoods of local fishing communities. Our aim is to scrap the Common Fisheries Policy and replace it with a new Europe-wide fisheries policy based on the regional management of fish stocks. We will take firm action to end quota-hopping, begin the phased abolition of industrial fishing and strengthen decommissioning incentives.
• Promote safe food. We will set up a Food Commission, independent from MAFF and accountable to Parliament, maintain strict controls on the use of bio-technology and press for higher common food standards across the European Union.

We will:

• Boost local economic development and job opportunities. We will support local development corporations. We will build new partnerships between local government and the private and voluntary sectors, to regenerate local economies and promote community enterprise. We will link local training to local jobs. We will encourage the establishment of community banks and credit unions.
• Tackle urban crime. We will expand community policing, ensure that all new planning takes account of the need to deter crime and focus on crime prevention.
• Encourage public transport. We will enable Councils to co-ordinate bus and train services and give them powers to introduce urban road pricing schemes, using the revenue raised to invest in better public transport.
• Reform and strengthen elected local government. We will give local Councils greater control over their own affairs. We will create a strategic authority for London. We will encourage the use of 'planning for real' strategies, in which local people can make a direct input into major planning projects in their community.

We will:

• Tackle the concentration of media power. We will act to prevent media mergers or take-overs, except where these can be shown to advance quality, diversity and access. We will require the Independent Television Commission to protect the position of smaller regional ITV companies, within the network supply agreement.
• Maintain the role of the BBC as the benchmark of public service broadcasting, committed to quality, diversity and universal access. We will protect the independence and impartiality of the BBC through its Board of Governors and its licence fee.
• Improve access to information technology and the Internet. We will ensure that everyone in Britain can have access, either individually or through a wide range of public access points, to a nationwide interactive communications network by the year 2000.
• Increase access to the arts. We will use the National Lottery to endow, house and improve access to the arts. We aim to move towards the European average for public funding of the arts. We aim to restore the principle of free access to national museum and gallery collections, starting with the removal of charges for school parties.
• Promote Britain's culture. We will promote film production in Britain. We will actively support the British Council and rejoin UNESCO. We will enhance the BBC World Service as a national asset.