The following article was written by the Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge Julian Huppert and published yesterday on the Guardian Website.

Civil liberties are a uniting issue for Liberal Democrats, while they divide other parties. We will carry on fighting for them.

Liberal Democrats must take a stand on civil liberties. This morning our party conference voted through a motion on civil liberties that reflects a number of proposals we made back in 2009. Yet the differences between now and then are palpable.

In government, Lib Dems now have the power to turn these words into action. At the same time we must negotiate with the Conservative party in order to get anything done.

But to govern is to choose. Do we, as Lib Dems, choose to use our next few years in government, and our political capital, to champion civil liberties?

I know that basic liberties will never be the leading issue in this country. At best a token human interest story will capture a public outrage. The 15-year-old silenced for calling scientology a “cult”. The kettling of a youngster who was simply out to protest. The citizen whose personal data has been sold for corporate gain.

There is a huge temptation to abandon this liberal cause for populist pursuits. Yet it is difficult to overstate how damaging it would be to our country, our party and the future of this government if we chose to do so.

First, to be a liberal is to defend basic rights at every juncture, no matter what the impact on our poll ratings, no matter how much political capital we have to invest in order to get the Conservatives to agree. Our party’s constitution commits us to this cause.

Second, for liberties to be secured this country needs a very public debate. In Britain the phrase “human rights” has become a byword for undeserved entitlements. It is totally unacceptable that politicians have allowed this to happen. It is up to governing politicians to show that a misreading of the Human Rights Act does not mean we should abandon it.

Third, civil liberties are a core, unifying issue for the Lib Dems. There are MPs in the Labour and Conservative parties who would defend civil liberties to the very end, and others – too many others – who would tear them up at the first opportunity. There is no such division in the Lib Dems. Issues such as civil liberties are utterly uniting for our party, and utterly divisive for the others. To abandon human rights would therefore be a greater threat to the coalition than most commentators realise.

Finally, if we do not provide a thorough, reasoned defence of civil liberties, no other party will. Labour is still arguing for the control-order regime, even in opposition. The Conservatives, with some notable exceptions, are all too ready to reach for the statute book or the prison cell when trouble brews. It would be anathema for Lib Dems to abandon liberties.

We have already invested much time and effort in government to defend civil liberties. ID cards have been scrapped. DNA databases curtailed. Surveillance controlled. Child rights restored. Habeas corpus defended. Government data opened. It is unlikely that these changes to Labour’s legacy would have been adopted by a Conservative government alone.

And yet, the defence of civil liberties, by its very nature, is a constant battle. Human rights are about protecting an individual from a state that will always want to curtail their freedom in the interests of security, or in a desire to achieve some social good.

The need for us to continue to defend civil liberties in government, and to bring this battle out into the public, is not a choice, it is right at the core of what it means for our party to be in politics. And it is right at the core of our continued support for this government.