The Liberal Democrat Manifesto 1997

Our aim: To recast Britain's foreign policy and enable this country to play a leading role in shaping Europe and strengthening international institutions.

The problem: For too long British foreign policy has looked backwards to its imperial past. Britain's interests have been damaged by an attitude to Europe that has been, at best, ambivalent and, at worst, hostile. This attitude has also cost Britain opportunities for influence and advantage.

Our commitment: Liberal Democrats will ensure that Britain plays a leading role in shaping Europe, democratising its institutions and strengthening its role as a framework for prosperity, peace and security. Britain, with its world experience, expert armed forces and permanent membership of the UN Security Council, has a unique role to play in reforming international institutions for the next century.
Our priorities are to:

• Make the European Union (EU) work more effectively and democratise its institutions.
• Widen Europe to include the new democracies of central and eastern Europe.
• Create a strong framework for Britain's defence and security through NATO and European co-operation.
• Give Britain a leading role in reforming and strengthening the UN and other international institutions.
• Promote an enforceable framework for international law, human rights and the protection of the environment.

In seeking to reform the EU, our priorities are to:

• Give the British people a say. Reform that fundamentally changes Britain's place in Europe should only proceed if it has the explicit support of Britain's people. If there is any substantial change in Britain's relationship with the EU, the British people must give their consent through a referendum.
• Make EU institutions more democratic and accountable. We will give the House of Commons a more effective role in scrutinising European policy. We also want the Council of Ministers and the EC Commission to be more accountable to the elected European Parliament. We will introduce a fair and proportional voting system for British MEPs in time for the 1999 European Parliament elections.
• Make EU decision-making more efficient and effective. Europe cannot effectively enlarge without improving its decision-making. We therefore favour the wider application of majority voting. But we will keep the veto on all issues relating to the constitution, budgetary matters and regulations on pay and social security. We support the use of the 'double majority', especially on matters such as foreign and security policy. Each member state must retain the unfettered right to make its own decisions on the commitment of its national troops.

Our aims in Europe are to:

• Enhance economic prosperity, by promoting the freedom of movement of people, goods, services and money throughout the EU and by completing the European Single Market, particularly in areas of financial services, pensions and air travel.
• Participate in a successful single currency. Being part of a successful single currency will bring low inflation and low interest rates. Staying out will result in less investment and a loss of influence. However, three conditions must be met before Britain can join. First, the single currency must be firmly founded on the Maastricht criteria. Second, Britain must meet those criteria. Third, the British people must have agreed to it in a referendum.
• Strengthen the European framework for peace and security. Britain's security and national interests are best pursued in partnership with its European neighbours. We will work to strengthen European Common Foreign and Security policy to enable greater scope for united European action. Individual member states must be free to decide whether or not their national forces will take part in any particular action.
• Fight crime and protect citizens' rights through more effective co-operation between EU states' police and customs forces with greater democratic accountability. We will work to improve European co-operation against cross-border criminal activity and allow free movement for Britain's people throughout Europe. The administration of border controls should remain with individual member nations until they can be confident that the EU's external borders are secure.
• Reform the Common Agricultural Policy, converting it into a system of direct payments to support economic, social and environmental goals in rural communities.
• Reform fisheries policies, scrapping the Common Fisheries Policy and replacing it with a new Europe-wide fisheries policy based on the regional management of fish stocks. We will take urgent action to end quota-hopping and begin the phased abolition of industrial fishing.

We will:

• Maintain a strong defence at home and enable the UK to play a leading role in keeping international peace. We will maintain Britain's overall defence capability at its current level, whilst ensuring UK forces meet current needs and are appropriate to potential threats.
• Retain Britain's basic nuclear capability through the Trident submarine force until such time as international multilateral nuclear disarmament can be achieved. We will restrict the number of nuclear warheads on Trident to the same number as previously deployed on Polaris.
• Resist the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. We will press for the conclusion of a verifiable Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. We will ensure that Britain plays an active part in talks to reduce the holdings of strategic nuclear weapons.
• Support the principle of common security. We support the extension of the security guarantees, from which western Europe has benefited, to the new democracies of central and eastern Europe. We support NATO and its enlargement.

Reforming the United Nations
Playing a leading role in strengthening and reforming the United Nations should be a central aspect of Britain's foreign policy over the next decade.

We will work to:

• Strengthen the UN's peacekeeping capability so that it can take earlier and more effective action to prevent or suppress conflict. This should include establishing fast track machinery for negotiations; permanent, on-call, peacekeeping forces made up from high-calibre troops provided by member states; the reinstatement of a Military Staff Committee; the establishment of a UN Staff College to train officers; and improvements to the UN's command control, communication and intelligence capabilities.
• Support the establishment of an International Criminal Court to deal with genocide and war crimes.

We will:

• Take a lead in international environmental negotiations. We will press for tough and legally binding international targets for greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants.
• Develop a global system of environmental protection. We will work for the creation of a global environmental organisation. We will promote an environmental equivalent of the Geneva Convention, to outlaw gross acts of environmental destruction in times of war.

We will:

• Increase Britain's contribution to overseas aid. We will set out a timetable for sustained progress towards achieving the UN target for overseas development aid of 0.7 per cent of GNP within the next 10 years.
• Promote a timetable for debt relief to the poorest states including a programme for cancelling debt and the creation of new and additional resources for debt relief.
• Target Britain's bilateral aid where it is most needed. We will focus Britain's bilateral aid on the least developed countries and end the practice of tying aid.
• Require states that receive UK development assistance to respect the fundamental human rights of their people and suspend UK programmes where these standards are breached.

We will:

• End the sale of British arms, war material, and 'dual use' technologies to regimes which abuse human rights, and strictly control arms sales to regions of tension or potential conflict.
• Seek a new international regime to control the arms trade. We will support tighter EU-wide restrictions on transfers of military technology to non-democratic regimes and press for the establishment of a mandatory UN register, in which all arms sales and transfers must be listed.
• Ban landmines. We will place an immediate and total ban on the production, stockpiling and export of anti-personnel landmines and work towards a global ban on landmine production.

We will seek action to:

• Enhance free trade by further reducing tariff and non-tariff barriers, especially against the poorest countries.
• Improve global labour standards by permitting countries to discriminate against goods produced by nations that maintain practices such as child, slave and forced labour. We will support the work of the International Labour Organisation in raising labour standards throughout the world.
• Advance environmental objectives. We support the addition of an environmental sustainability clause to the GATT, setting out agreed principles of environmental policy against which trade measures can be judged.
• Reduce trans-national corporations' ability to abuse market power, through the development of a framework for global competition policy.

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