As Liberal Democrat Voice has reported in depth over recent weeks, there was a surge of debate around the party’s response to the Digital Economy Bill, leading to our open letter from PPCs, and the emergency motion passed at conference. Great joy.

Then it all went quiet.

There has of course been a little matter of the Budget. MPs and candidates have been, quite rightly, out on the hustings and the doorsteps. But if our Parliamentary party were otherwise engaged, the blogosphere was not. The dedicated campaigning of the Open Rights Group was joined by the 38 Degrees lobby. They have objected not only to the content of bits of the Digital Economy Bill, but also the obvious concerns about its process.

If nothing else, this Bill has highlighted to a new generation of voters the urgent need for Parliamentary reform. The unelected second chamber; ridiculous rush, horsetrading and lack of debate of the washup; the way a Government elected with a minority of the vote can railroad through legislation – all of this must change.

The Open Rights Group anti-disconnection rally took the issue from the screen to the streets, and I was delighted to be invited to speak on behalf of our party. As I told the crowds, we started campaigning for Freedom of Information against a Tory government; now we are campaigning for free exchange of information under Labour. When you deal with a death, there is a cycle of emotion from grief through anger to acceptance. When it comes to the death of our freedoms under Labour, as Liberal Democrats we may be aggrieved, we are angry, but we will not accept it.

Liberal Democrat campaigners have been maintaining the pressure on MPs of all parties. Julian Huppert and I were co-signatories to a letter in the Guardian calling for a rethink, and several of us have been blogging and podcasting to keep up the profile of the issue.

I was proud that our party’s policy put us in the lead; but I wasn’t alone in feeling frustrated that our MPs were so quiet on the subject. So as well as speaking up with the Open Rights Group, I’ve been speaking behind the scenes to the party leadership, to try and ensure that our party follows through on the direction that conference set ten days ago.

And I’ve now had a response through from Don Foster MP and the DCMS team, the full text of which is on my blog here.

Now it’s perhaps not the response as the Open Rights Group would have written it; but then I’m in favour of LibDem positions being written, well, by Liberal Democrats.

It’s a long text, setting out why our MPs feel parts of the Bill – on areas such as Channel 4 and regional TV – merit support; and why they want to balance internet freedom with support for the creative industries. So there is no commitment to vote against the Bill as a whole. But, unlike Labour and Tory front benches, the LibDem DCMS team do acknowledge that further debate is definitely required. “The controversial parts of the Bill will need to be scrutinised and voted upon by the next parliament before they can be brought into law. Liberal Democrats MPs would not support these sections of the Bill without this process.”

The logic of that is that LibDem MPs will vote against those elements in the washup, if only because there’s been no debate. We’ll expect them to stick to that.

The highlight for me is clear opposition to web-blocking: “We do not believe that measures to address site blocking can reasonably be included in the Digital Economy Bill and we will not support any such measures”.

So we have the keenly-awaited clear assurance that Liberal Democrat MPs, as a party, not just individual rebels, will vote against web-blocking in the Digital Economy Bill (better late than never). This alone sets us apart from the other main parties.

On disconnection, the position is less absolute. “The Liberal Democrats are unconvinced of the merits of measures such as temporary account suspension or bandwidth throttling” and propose a set of technical measures, to be met before any disconnection would be possible; the main ones are that copyright infringers would be notified by letter, without any risk of their internet connection being affected for at least a year, and that any process to disconnect users explicitly assumes their innocence until they are proven guilty.

Another concern our motion highlighted was the threat to wifi and community access. The MPs pick that up as an issue too: “We believe there is inadequate protection in the Bill for schools, libraries, universities and other businesses offering internet access to the public” and they promise “We will take further action in the Commons to improve the legislation.”

On copyright they assert “We have already opposed – and helped defeat – government proposals to give itself powers to change copyright law almost at will. We will oppose any attempt to reinstate such powers in the Commons.” They also call on the industries concerned about copyright “to develop easy and affordable ways to legally access their products” so that “disconnection is never required”.

So overall two cheers for the LibDems on the Digital Economy Bill:

First for being open to debate at our conference – hard to imagine Labour or Conservatives allowing such challenge at their last pre-election gathering.

Two for promising to take action – by promising to vote against the web-blocking provisions of the Bill, and to demand further scrutiny on other controversial measures, LibDem MPs are taking a progressive stance quite distinct from the other main parties.

And the third cheer? That may have to wait a few weeks – for the next Parliament when we will have a new wave of MPs ready to strengthen the support for web freedom, and undo the worst provisions of the Bill. And, in the case of the Liberal Democrats, a policy mandate to do just that.

In the meantime, three things we can all do:

– lobby your own MP, of whatever party, saying that your vote depends on them voting against web-blocking
– highlight the positive moves the LibDem MPs have made, in order to put pressure on others to do the same
– help elect more LibDem MPs, with a pro-freedom mandate, to ensure that the legislation will be further amended in the next Parliament.

Now I’m back to those doorsteps!

Bridget Fox is Lib Dem prospective parliamentary candidate for Islington South & Finsbury.