The group has been meeting since Autumn 2016 but there was a hiatus for the General Election. There was a consultation at a previous conference and the group took evidence up to April 2017. Martin went through some of the draft conclusions that the group had reached and the structure of the paper that it was to produce. He said that the United Kingdom needs a liberal strategy for restoring pride in our place in the world and indicated that we will need to analyse the state of the world we are in, the sort of world that we would seek and how we get there. We will inevitably have to address Brexit as well. He went into some detail as to the other issues that the paper will address.

The committee had a detailed discussion and raised several issues. They included gender and race inequality, technology, climate change, Gibraltar, domestic violence and the aid programme, education and the use of the British curriculum overseas, the implications of Brexit and consular services and the BBC World Service. There was significant praise for the work of the group. The final paper will return to FPC.

Update on Brexit

Tom Brake provided the committee with his analysis of what was happening in Parliamentary terms with Brexit.

Brexit business is presently divided between Commons and Lords and the committee was told that there is a good cross-party work to support particular amendments. Many in the Lords are anxious not to scupper or unreasonably delay the bill but there is considerable scope for ping pong between the two Houses in due course. There are amendments sponsored by Anna Soubry and Kenneth Clarke about the Customs Union which could be difficult for the Government. There are further amendments on the Customs Union as well. There are a number of areas in which the Government may run into serious trouble. Not all the required bills are presently before Parliament and there may be serious problems with the timescale.

Tom said that the Liberal Democrats are working very hard to advocate the case for the public to be given a vote on the deal. For obvious reasons, we think that there is no such thing as a good deal on Brexit.

The committee noted that there is going to be a debate on Brexit at conference.

Questions were also raised about timescales, the transition period, Article 50 and our campaigning messages.

FPC Awayday

The committee is to hold an awayday later in the year. Previous awaydays have been really helpful in allowing the committee to pull together general themes.