As one of the Vice Chairs of the Federal Policy Committee and a member of the working group which drafted the paper, Jeremy proposed the party’s new policy on international law at party conference on 21 September 2006 on behalf of the FPC:

For Liberal Democrats, there is no more fundamental principle than the rule of law. It is impossible to create a liberal or a democratic society without it. Here in the UK, it is the fundamental basis of our society, of our stability and our prosperity.

We live today in a more globalised and interdependent world than ever before – and a strong, effective and inclusive international rule of law is vital to guaranteeing its stability.

This motion and this paper sets out how we would like to make international law more effective, fairer, and more legitimate, across the range of areas:

• how the use of force is controlled,

• how international law can more effectively tackle multinational crime and terrorism

• how it can better ensure that human rights are protected

• how it can manage the global economy for the interests of all

• and how it can control the global environment

But despite the increasingly urgent need for more effective international rule of law, there is a growing number of those who want to work outside it, to work around international law rather than within and through it.

The Labour government doesn’t seem to believe in international law as a way of addressing the challenges facing Britain and the world. It has attached itself to the coat-tails of a superpower which – while it is prepared most of the time to go through the motions of participating in the international legal structures – when it comes to it actually thinks the answers lie in a unilateral approach – not just in invading Iraq, but also too often in trade, or the environment, ignoring either World Trade Organisation rules or the Geneva conventions when it suits it.

This is a way the world could choose to go down – it has after all been the norm in most of the world for most of history.

But what are the implications of pursuing this kind of approach – rather than the rule of law – for tackling the serious challenges we face in today’s 21st century world:

• a world which has to defeat the threat of international terrorism

• a world of aggressive smaller states, some of whom are armed with nuclear weapons

• a world where some of the largest multinational economic enterprises operate untroubled by the law, in the criminal sphere

• a world which has to tackle the life-threatening environmental threats to our planet – and which has to cope with the conflict for scarce natural resources that that will lead to

• a world where the decision about whether you lose your job is as likely as not to be taken in a board room on the other side of the world

• and a world where we try to achieve higher standards for people in the world’s poorest countries

Liberal Democrats believe that a strong rule of international law is essential to tackling these twenty-first century challenges in a way which serves the interests of all, and in a way which is actually effective.

The Conservatives too struggle to grasp the concept of a fair and international rule of law which operates in the interest of all and applies to all. They are only prepared to take the most limited view of Britain’s narrow interest.

We can see the approach of today’s Conservative party to internationalism from the mess that they have got themselves into over their relations with political parties – supposedly their own ideological partners – in other EU countries. They have declared that they will withdraw from the European People’s Party – in fact precisely because of its commitment to a supranational federal rule of law – and create their own alternative multinational grouping instead.

Their only problem has been in finding anyone else in join them. This seems to be a good illustration of the Conservative party’s approach to multilateralism – negotiation consists of ensuring that no-one else agrees with you – and creating a multinational agreement to which nobody else subscribes!

This paper sets out our proposals to strengthen the rule of law – to improve the way it is made – particularly to increase participation in it so it is constructed in the light of the interests of all, not just the most powerful countries. And then how to improve the way it is implemented and enforced, and not neglected or manipulated.

It looks first at how international law should control the use of force. The Security Council of the United Nations must lie at the heart of authorising intervention. Despite its neglect by the US, UK and others over Iraq, the Security Council has been in many cases an effective bedrock for preventing unilateral military intervention, and its importance in doing that must be maintained and expanded. If there are strong arguments in a specific circumstance for preventive military action, they should be brought to the Security Council, where full weight should be given to the strategies of persuasion, negotiation, containment and deterrence.

Only as a last resort, where international peace and security is threatened, should military intervention take place, authorised by the Security Council.

The motion does however recognise the need to balance non-intervention with the duty of the international community to protect the human rights of all. This too should be done through the United Nations. In exceptional cases, the Security Council has been unable to reach agreement on intervention – sometimes because of the use of the veto by one permanent member, despite broad consensus – and intervention has nevertheless taken place. In Kosovo in 1999, for example, Britain rightly supported the intervention to prevent further destruction of the population of Kosovo by its own Yugoslav government.

Where there is a widely supported and demonstrably legitimate case for intervention, but the Security Council has failed to act, we believe there can be a case nevertheless for direct intervention to prevent large-scale abuses of human rights.

Where a state does take a pre-meditated decision for military action, it should do so in an open and democratic a manner as possible. In the UK, we believe the House of Commons vote which took place before the invasion of Iraq should now become the norm. The United Kingdom Parliament should have the sole power to authorise military action – with provision for retrospective authorisation in exceptional cases.

This paper confirms too our commitment to reducing the UK’s own stockpile of nuclear weapons, and continuing to working internationally towards the goal – confirmed by all the formal Nuclear Weapons States at the review conference in 2000 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty – of totally eliminating all nuclear arsenals.

It is too easy for criminals to escape the law by exploiting the historical lack of co-ordination between law enforcement agencies in different countries. We have to have more effective instruments of international law to tackle challenges such as people trafficking and drug trafficking.

We also want to see all countries ratify and implement the twelve UN conventions on terrorism, as well as the OECD’s recommendations for tackling the financing of terrorist activities. The EU has led the way in developing these kind of instruments: sort of benefits that they can bring were simply illustrated by the European Arrest Warrant, which allowed a suspect for the London Underground bombings of last July to be speedily extradited from Italy back to the UK.

One of the fundamental functions of a system of international law is to protect the basic human rights of all.

We all understand and support the need to be very robust in taking action to stop terrorists and prevent atrocities. But you have to take a choice, whether in doing so you are prepared to operate outside the law – through practices such as abduction of individuals by the state, wholly outside legal processes – or whether you insist that governments and the state must always act within the law. Liberal Democrats are very clear about our answer to that.

Tony Blair and the Labour government seem to have made the opposite choice.

They have accepted the practice of rendition – illegal abduction of the individual – by the United States government

And they have been prepared to condone torture – which apart from being morally repugnant is also certainly contrary to international law. They actually opposed the ruling of the House of Lords last year that evidence obtained abroad by torture should not be admissible in a British court.

Too often the Labour government seems to have seen international law as a problem to get around – or perhaps ignored – and not as part of the solution.

One area where the international legal structures currently fail to govern fairly or effectively is in management of the global economy, particularly as it affects less developed countries. The institutions – the IMF, World Bank, and the WTO – too often look like instruments for a few rich nations to create a legal system which serves their interests at the expense of others – and ignorance of how they affect poorer countries. We propose a range of reforms to give less well off countries for the first time a meaningful say in the creation of law which affects them – surely a fundamental principle for Liberal Democrats – and reforms which would actually achieve more their aims effectively.

And we want a proper and effective system to govern foreign direct investment in poorer countries, ending the ability of large multinationals to play different jurisdictions off against each other or bully smaller and poorer countries. It is a scandal that some British and other western companies which in this country would be subject to proper legal regulation in the interests of all, are when abroad effectively able to operate in a manner which is close to unaccountable to the law. International law – like domestic law – should not be there to prevent private economic activity, but should ensure that operates within a proper legal framework created for the interests of all.

The motion and the policy paper conclude with the area where it is perhaps most obvious that if law is to achieve its objectives, it needs to be at a global level rather than a purely national one: protecting the environment. It is an area desperately in need of a new approach which will make it more effective and coherent.

There is no shortage in the number of treaties: more than 500 treaties and agreements have been signed to protect various aspects of the natural environment. What they almost all lack are teeth to ensure they are enforced, and financial resources to ensure they are monitored. Unsurprisingly, more than 500 treaties tread on each others’ toes and those of other international legal structures such as the WTO, overlapping and conflicting with each other and further adding to the confusion. This is an area urgently crying out for a more integrated, simple and more effective legal system to address a range of issues central to our survival.

On the environment, as in other areas, if every state and multinational company thinks it can operate outside legal constraint, then there is no hope of being able to achieve these vital aims. A strong, inclusive, and fair system of international law is the only way of

• ensuring global security

• Tackling international crime

• Protecting human rights

• Managing a global economy in the interests of all

• And protecting the environment

Labour and the Conservatives don’t seem to believe in a fair and effective system of international law and won’t promote it. Only the Liberal Democrats seek to create such a system, and I hope you will support our proposals to do so this morning.