Taster
This is the first OFFICIAL Knowvote approved party summary. Think of it as a taster for ya’ll whilst the website’s still offline..
The Liberal Democratic Party.
The Lib Dems are the third largest political party within the UK Parliament, but are yet to have been given the chance to govern the country. The Lib Dems are a ‘liberal’ party, which means they promote personal freedom and equality and less state intervention within peoples’ lives. For example, they are strongly opposed to the introduction of National Identity cards and want to change many of the current ‘anti-terror’ laws such as the ability to hold a suspect without trial for 28 days.
Nick Clegg [the Lib Dem leader] had previously attempted to repeal [try and change] many laws within the Human Rights Act, such as the banning of protests outside Westminster. In fact, the Lib Dems strongly promote equality for religious, racial, gender and sexual groups, for example, they were the leading party on the campaign for civil-partnerships.
Although opposed to state intervention, the Lib Dems are highly supportive of the NHS and the welfare state. They would also like to lower taxes on the poorer people in the UK and raise them on the wealthier people. They have also claimed that they will scrap tuition fees for Universities, but recently this policy has come under scrutiny.
In terms of foreign policy, the Lib Dems were heavily critical of the Iraq War [though some Lib Dem MP’s did support it] and are highly opposed to the use of military intervention in international affairs. They are also the most pro-European out of the main parties in the UK.
The Lib Dems are very supportive of political reform as well. They want the current system to be changed to be proportionally representative [i.e. you get the amount of seats for the amount of votes you get] and for the House of Lords to be democratically elected.
The Lib Dems are also the greenest party out of the main parties and are strongly supportive of environmental issues. They are currently trying to convince the government to increase their desired 60% emission cut to an 80% emission cut.
In terms of crime, the Lib Dems are more focussed on introducing more police onto the streets. They also want to halve Britain’s prison population, using prisons only for serious criminals. In terms of recreational drug use, the Lib Dems have promoted the use of a new system which may involve less stigma around certain drugs such as Cannabis.
Party Policy: http://www.libdems.org.uk/policies
Richard
