Globalisation

Liberal Democrats welcome many aspects of globalisation, including open borders, the exchange of goods, service and ideas, and the movement of peoples, across national boundaries, and the closer links between communities and nations that this leads to.

Nevertheless, we also recognise that it brings challenges, including, for the UK:

• The need for the British economy to continue to develop and innovate, generating new opportunities for employment and prosperity as older industries migrate to developing economies.
• The need for these new developments to be environmentally sustainable.
• The problems faced by areas of the country excessively dependent on declining industries.
• The problems faced by lower-skilled British workers subjected to competition from economic migrants, and the social tensions that can result from large movements of migrant labour.

Recent governments’ failure to meet these challenges adequately has contributed to a feeling of helplessness in the face of globalisation, and hostility to many of its aspects, including trade liberalisation and immigration.

This working group will therefore prepare a paper which looks at all these issues, including, in particular:

• The role of government in supporting competitiveness and innovation, including action to address the UK’s skills gap, investment in infrastructure, and establishing a regulatory environment which fosters enterprise while supporting high environmental and labour standards.
• The need to develop environmentally sustainable patterns of production and consumption.
• Support for individual workers, and geographical regions, adversely affected by competition, including investment in education, a refocusing of employment policy, intervention in the labour market and the promotion of regional development policy.
• Policy on economic migration and the social impacts of immigration.

The working group will need to consider European-level as well as UK-level policies, and should co-ordinate with the Europe policy Working Group as necessary.

The working group is required to produce a consultation paper in advance of the Spring 2008 Party conference, and a policy paper for the Autumn 2008 Party conference of no more than 8,000 words.