• Introduce a statutory defence of responsible publication on a matter of public interest;
• Clarify the defences of justification and fair comment, renamed as ’truth’ and ‘honest opinion’;
• Respond to the problems of the internet age, including multiple publications and the responsibility of Internet Service Providers and hosters;
• Protect those reporting on proceedings in Parliament and other issues of public concern;
• Require claimants to show substantial harm, and corporate bodies to show financial loss;
• Encourage the speedy settlement of disputes without recourse to costly litigation.

Of the bill Lord Lester has said:

The time is over-ripe for Parliament to replace our patched-up archaic law with one that gives stronger protection to freedom of speech. No Government or Parliament has conducted a thorough and comprehensive review. My Bill provides the opportunity to do so and to modernise the law in step with the technological revolution. It creates a framework of principles rather than a rigid and inflexible code, and it seeks a fair balance between reputation and public information on matters of public interest.

Robert Dougans, Solicitor-Advocate for Simon Singh in his recent case against the British Chiropractic Association has welcomed the bill:

Lord Lester’s Bill should be welcomed by free speech campaigners. The proposals follow on from the Singh decision in expanding and enhancing the defence of honest opinion. This ought to be good news for all those seeking to engage in hard-hitting debate. The most important legacy might simply be putting much of libel law on a statutory basis. Attempts by the courts and Parliament to reform the libel laws have just added layers of complexity, to the extent that only specialist lawyers are able to advise upon it. This naturally increases costs and makes it harder to give definite advice.

Meanwhile Evan Harris has said:

Libel law reform is needed to prevent the chilling of comment which is in the public interest. It is therefore essential for scientists and academics and giving their opinion in good faith and responsibly, and their publishers, to know at the time of publication that they will have an effective defence against an unjustified libel plaintiff. Lord Lester’s skilfully crafted bill is one way of doing that and also offers the Government a vehicle for legislation following their review.

However, what it certainly can do is to catch a moment of enthusiasm and to make it easy to do that which would otherwise be hard. The case of Evan Harris, Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West & Abingdon, illustrates this clearly.

Courtesy of his views on scientific and social issues, Evan has profile and many fans right across the country. It also means he’s no stranger to debate on issues ranging from homeopathy via libel reform to assisted suicide. Sometimes that also means he’s on the receiving end of particularly nasty and unpleasant personal attacks – as has been the case recently. Neil Fawcett (who is running his re-election campaign) has documented some of them over on his blog and as Neil points out, the welcome reaction of many to those sort of attacks has been people flooding to put up posters and offer help:

I understand that there are people who honestly believe that life starts at conception and that abortion is the equivalent of murder. I disagree with them, but I believe they should have the right to state their views and campaign to change the law, which is what most of them do.

But to produce and distribute leaflets tagging someone with the nickname ‘Dr Death’ – a name usually associated with Nazi torturers and serial killers – is simply disgusting.

Because Evan’s campaign takes online donations it also means that as the coverage of the personal attacks has played out online, it’s been very easy for people to make donations in a way that before hardly anyone would have. (Hunt out a cheque book, envelope, stamp and then start trying to find from the phone book who to ring in order to find out who to make the cheque payable to.)

The result? Over £6,000 raised so far and counting.

There's been another example of this in the last few days over on the Daily Telegraph.

The brief summary: Cristina Odone writes piece attacking Lib Dem MP Evan Harris; numerous people post comments disagreeing with her. Cristina Odone then writes follow up piece deprecating all the criticisms and suggesting they were from a 'rapid reaction force'; numerous people again post comments disagreeing with her. There is also then a spin off on Twitter where, thanks to Odone's use of the phrase "spooky posse" to describe commenters disagree with her, people start tweeting how proud they are to be members of the #spookyposse.

It's noteworthy that the comments to her first piece weren't just whistling in the wind; they had enough of an impact to flush out a second piece. Moreover, they are part of a wider erosion of trust in newspapers; the more people see others point out the flaws and mistakes in newspapers, the less trust they have in them. As I've said often before, that lack of trust in newspapers is part of the problem they face: it's not just that people can get news from elsewhere; if they don't trust your source of news, what are the odds of persuading people it's worthy paying for?

A change to Section 106 of the Postal Services Act 2000 might not at first sound that important, but the change means that in future postal operators (such as the Royal Mail) can decide to detain any item of post and send it on to Customs and Excise for inspection.

Previously this could be done, but only if you were first told that your post was being intercepted and (if you are in the UK) given a chance to be present. Both those safeguards against abuse of power and unnecessary intrusions into privacy have been removed. Instead all the interceptions can happen in secrecy – and secrecy means lack of accountability for how well or badly the power is used.

And it gets worse. The Government claims the clause is just about tackling tobacco smuggling. Yet you know what’s missing from the new rules? Any mention of them only applying to tobacco. Or only applying to smuggling.

And it gets even worse. Because how did this get through the House of Commons? It got through with barely a debate and with no vote.

It was left to the Liberal Democrats (again) to raise the issues that should be debated – well done Evan Harris – but no Labour or Conservative MPs joined him and – courtesy of the Labour/Conservative deal on how to handle the bil- l there was no vote.

As Ben Williams puts it:

Because it was Clause 59 of the Finance Bill, and there were only three hours for debate, it didn’t get reached for discussion. In fact, by the time MPs got on to the bit where they consider the bill in detail, line-by-line, there were only 28 minutes left to look at the whole bill.

Think about that for a moment.

28 minutes for a line-by-line examination of the bill that would usually – for the Finance Bill – take months in Committee.

This change to the law was made without a single second of proper scrutiny – and without a single vote. Worse, it was made without even the opportunity for a vote.

And that is what the Conservative Party and Labour Party wanted.

New this month to Twitter are Evan Harris, Nick Harvey and Charles Kennedy, bringing the total number of tweeting Liberal Democrat MPs up to 30.

UPDATE: Mark Williams has also joined Twitter recently. Apologies for missing you first time round Mark.

New entrant Evan is straight in at the top of the list. That’s no fluke: Evan’s put the work into working out how to use Twitter well and has built up a good community which reaches out beyond the usual activists suspects. Paul Burstow’s rise up the table is the other striking move.

1. (new) DrEvanHarris 51 (new)
2. (-1) nick_clegg 48 (-7)
3. (-1) joswinson 44 (-8)
3=. (nc)  SandraGidley 44 (-2)
5=. (-1) lfeatherstone 42 (-2)
5=. (-1) philwillismp 42 (-2)
5=. (+1) vincecable 42 (nc)
8. (+11) PaulBurstow 39 (+17)
9=. (-2) normanlamb 36 (-4)
9=. (+1) SusanKramer 36 (+4)
11=. (-1) GregMulholland1 35 (+3)
11=. (-1)  jgoldsworthy 35 (+3)
13. (-5) willie_rennie 33 (-4)
14. (-5) acarmichael4mp 30 (-3)
15. (+2) ChrisHuhne 28 (+3)
15=. (+4) JLeechMP 28 (+6)
15=. (-2) timfarron 28 (-2)
18=. (-3) AnnetteBrookeMP 27 (+1)
18=. (-5) moore4borders 27 (-3)
20. (+5) DonFosterMP 25 (+6)
21. (-6) AndrewGeorgeMP 24 (-2)
22. (new) mark4ceredigion 22 (new)
23=. (new) charles_kennedy 21 (new)
23=. (-5) eddaveymp 21 (-2)
23=. (-2) stevewebb1 21 (-1)
26. (-4) thomasbrake 20 (n/c)
27=. (-5) lembitopik 19 (-1)
27=. (nc) malcolmbruce 19 (+1)
27=. (-2) PaulRowen 19 (n/c)
30=. (-8) dannyalexander 16 (-4)
30=. (new) NickHarveyND 16 (new)

And finally, ahem, I would come in top of this table (hey, my initials are MP so why shouldn’t I be in the table?) with libdemvoice in second just ahead of Evan Harris. Make of that what you will…

I've also added him to my list of all Liberal Democrat MPs on Twitter, which lets you follow them all in one place: http://twitter.com/#/list/markpack/libdem-mps

MPs have backed a series of reforms aimed at beefing up the ability of backbenchers to create new laws and hold the government to account.

Proposals backed include a creating a backbench committee to set a timetable for Commons business.

A bid by the Labour and Tory front benches to restrict the committee to setting a timetable for just 15 days per session was rejected by MPs…

The reforms were drawn up by Labour MP and chairman of the public administration committee Tony Wright in the wake of last year’s expenses scandal…

MPs also agreed to back proposals ensuring the chairman of the Public Accounts Committee – the key watchdog that scrutinises government spending – is always an opposition MP (to ensure the government is held properly to account), and to eject any member of a committee who does not attend at least 60% of meetings.

But they rejected an amendment put forward by the Conservative leadership and supported by the government, to restrict a new backbench committee to timetabling just 15 days’ business per session.

Lib Dem frontbencher David Heath said it was “too restrictive” and it was opposed by members of Tony Wright’s cross-party reform committee…

MPs also approved a process for electing deputy speakers – which have been chosen by party whips in the past.

Mention should also be made of Evan Harris, who has been particularly active at supporting these reforms. Well down David, Evan and others.

Formally, there is a three part process to that manifesto: the manifesto working group chaired by Danny Alexander will present work to the Shadow Cabinet which will then in turn (quite possibly amended) go to the Federal Policy Committee (FPC).

How will this process work and who will the key people be in drawing up the manifesto?

In practice, the manifesto drafting process is highly iterative, with the party’s spokespeople and support staff feeding in proposals to the Manifesto Working Group which then cycle round all three parts of the process, getting refined as they go. It is also a process in which the text of motions passed by party conference has a real importance. Motions aren’t treated as 100% sacrosanct, particularly as events have often moved on since the conference at which they were passed, but at the very least if a proposal contradicts a conference motion that is seen by (nearly) all the players as a problem that needs resolving rather than just a quirk to ignore.

As far as the party’s past practice – even under Paddy Ashdown – and its rulebook go, the FPC very much has the final say on the completed manifesto document. Assuming that a quote from Danny Alexander suggesting otherwise was either a slip or a misquote and we’re not facing a complete meltdown in relations between the party leader and the party’s democratic structures, this is the process that will be worked through in the next few months.

Key party posts

The three stages process has been used repeatedly before – including under Ming Campbell for the election that wasn’t in 2007 – but previously had a key fourth, informal, component: Chris Rennard. His influence came not just from attending Shadow Cabinet but also from looking after the design of the manifesto and from the other players in the process having sufficient respect for his campaigning judgement that his views on what would, or wouldn’t, help gain votes were frequently crucial. With Chris’s departure there is a vacuum that, in their different ways, Chris Fox (Chief Executive), Jonny Oates (head of general election communications) and Hilary Stephenson (Director of Campaigns) will aim to fill. Although they all have electoral experience – Chris Fox as a Parliamentary candidate, Jonny Oates as a twice-winning general election agent and deputy leader of a council and Hilary Stephenson as a repeatedly winning constituency agent and organiser – they do not, at least as yet, quite have the influence which Chris Rennard had.

Another key player is Willie Rennie, the new chair of the Campaigns and Communications Committee (CCC). He’s been widely praised for his work in pulling together the policy and campaigning processes for the European elections and being both an MP and an ex-Campaigns Officer is well placed to play a similar role again.

The party’s policy staff are also vital to the manifesto process, though as their role is to service MPs, committees and others their role is much more in helping to ensure the process works smoothly, the words make sense and the numbers can withstand scrutiny than in shaping the overall direction and headline policies. (Indeed, given the acerbity of some of the recent policy debates, it’s a tribute to the party’s policy staff that in my researching for this piece I didn’t find anyone who criticised their role in them.)

Manifesto Working Group

The Manifesto Working Group is made up of Danny Alexander (FPC Vice-Chair), Vince Cable, Nick Clegg (FPC Chair), Ed Davey, Richard Grayson (FPC Vice-Chair), Jeremy Hargreaves (FPC Vice-Chair), Susan Kramer, David Laws and Steve Webb. It is unlikely that the manifesto, which emerges from it and then the Shadow Cabinet, will be in any significant way different from that which Nick Clegg would wish to see.

Federal Policy Committee (FPC)

The FPC may be another matter, especially as the politics of the FPC will be in the minds of people preparing proposals to go to the FPC. Both the Federal Policy Committee’s own debates, and the knowledge of those submitting proposals to it that they need to get through the FPC, will significantly shape the final manifesto.

Largely unheralded in the party, and completely unnoticed by the media, the FPC (whose members you can find here) has undergone a significant shift in the last year. Whilst the party leadership won the high profile vote on tax and spend in the Make It Happen paper in 2008, the subsequent FPC elections saw the emergence of a very strong block of people who can loosely be characterised as “social liberals”.

Neither left versus right nor social liberal versus economic liberal really captures the range of views in the party very well. But there is no doubt that a manifesto drawn up by, say, Jeremy Browne would look significantly different than one written by, say, Evan Harris.

Evan Harris

In those FPC elections, it was people who are nearer to Evan’s outlook who did extremely well, taking around half of the slots up for election by conference representatives. Overall, of the 29 members of the committee between 10-15 are of this viewpoint. Nearly all of the rest can be categorised as willing to give the party leader plenty of free rein on policy but are instinctively keener on social liberal rather than economic liberal approaches.

Thus, the Guardian’s Martin Kettle really couldn’t be more wrong to have said after Bournemouth, “Evan Harris has confirmed his role as a marginal figure in the party”. Far from it, Evan Harris has never been more influential than he is now.

Nick Clegg’s approach

The policy-making style of Nick Clegg and his senior advisers is one of the most contested issues around the party’s policy makers. Do they have a record of slipping in major changes to policy documents at the last moment? Or is the issue not the changes but how they were spun to the media? Or is primary reason some people believe either of these points because they weren’t paying enough attention in advance when they could have known what was coming?

The truth is a complicated mix of all three, but what is clearly the case is that there is has been widespread unhappiness about how some policy proposals have played out, and that extends far beyond the “usual suspects”.

A charitable person would say this reflects the paucity of detailed experience of the party’s policy-making process amongst the closest leadership advisors. A less charitable person would mutter about deliberate conspiracies. I’ve heard both views expressed by people closely involved in the events but in the end I err on the side of cock-up and confusion rather than conspiracy, in part because if it was a conspiracy it was a remarkably badly planned and executed one.

It all makes for an interesting contrast with Paddy Ashdown’s approach. He frequently seemed to make the placing of nearly every comma and absolute fight to the death. But to his great credit his underlying motivation was that he and the party had to be in agreement – and his way to do that was to confront policy critics and get them to change their minds.

A two-part manifesto?

One particular area where some of the disputes over conspiracy or not are likely to flare up again is the question of producing a split manifesto.

The logical extension of this year’s debates and also the European elections manifesto, is to have a two-part document: a short, punchy summary of our main campaign and media messages and a long detailed document with all our other commitments.

However, attach a set of financial promises to the former whilst downgrading the latter and you have not a sensible division of documents but a controversial sidelining of the bulk of party policy.

Questions for the future

How then will this all play out? Here are the main questions:

1. Will a split document approach turn into a sensible way of handling media and campaigning needs or will it be seen as a Trojan horse for sidelining policies popular with party conference but which come with a price tag?
2. How on the ball will FPC members be about detailed wording changes and where the division between two documents is drawn?
3. What will happen on tuition fees? In a sensible world, the obvious compromise is for the manifesto to include a commitment to abolish them during the term of a Parliament. This keeps the principle and gives much more room for manoeuvre on costings. However, in a sensible world a majority of FPC members would not have (felt the need to) write a letter to the Guardian in the middle of party conference criticising the messages being fed to the media by the party leadership.
4. Will the tuition feeds debate obscure other issues? Tuition fees are by no means the only party policy with a significant price tag. It is all too easy to see how the debate on them could, though, distracted – whether through conspiracy or cock-up – other policies that get dropped or delayed.
5. Who will learn what from the way policy proposals misfired in the party and in the media at Bournemouth Conference? From what people have told me so far, there is a split between those who as a result are digging deeper into their trenches, determined to do over what they see as the other side, and those who have reacted by wanting to get different people working together better.
6. How much will the manifesto really matter in the end? With huge uncertainty over the country’s economic outlook, any manifesto can quite legitimately have numerous caveats about what will be done and by when. Add in the possibility of TV leaders’ debates (with no FPC off camera to shout down policy comments) and the next election may see the content of the manifesto matter far less than previously. Or will it, via Willie Rennie, matter more than ever due to much tighter integration with the party’s campaigning?

Interesting times…