Liberal Democrat trade and industry spokesman Vincent Cable will today urge the party's conference delegates to embrace the free market.

"The Liberal Democrats have never been a socialist party," he will say.

And setting out a pledge to slim down Whitehall, Treasury spokesman Matthew Taylor will accuse Labour of running a bloated administration.

Yesterday, the party highlighted a number of key areas.

Proposals to make petty thieves and young offenders undertake much tougher community service were revealed.

Home affairs spokesman Simon Hughes told the party conference in Brighton that he wanted to force those on community service to carry out manual labour and, where possible, to repair the damage they had done.

And in a question and answer session, leader Charles Kennedy said Britain should not have participated in the Iraq war.

"If parliament had known what the country now knows, the very vote which led us into this unnecessary conflict could and should have had a very different outcome indeed," he said.

Interviewed in today's Telegraph, head of campaigns Lord Rennard says that the Lib Dems have developed a "decapitation" strategy designed to win the seats of senior Conservatives.

Meanwhile, today's Sun has two pages of reports on the "loony left policies of the Lib Dems' boozy chief".

The tabloid describes Charles Kennedy as "a loony leftie who would sell Britain out to Brussels, destroy the fabric of society and wreck industry".