Nick Clegg will launch the Liberal Democrat manifesto with a stinging critique of Labour's record on civil liberties and human rights – criticism that makes the prospect of a post-election partnership between the two parties more remote.

Speaking to the Guardian, the Lib Dem leader said he was shocked by the lack of reference to civil liberties in the Labour manifesto, and highlighted his own plans to scrap the next generation of biometric passports, and its communication base.

He said: "It's a measure of the authoritarian streak of the Labour party that it didn't refer once to liberty in its own manifesto.

"Civil liberties and individual freedoms are part of the DNA of the Lib Dems. It makes a compete mockery of the claim by Gordon Brown that he can speak for progressive voters in other parties when his own party has turned its back on one of the cornerstones of progressive politics.

"The division between the Lib Dems and Labour on civil liberties is as wide today as it was at the height of Blair's authoritarian populism."

Clegg was also directing his remarks at Lord Adonis, the transport secretary and former social democrat who has claimed there is a continuity of interest between the two parties. The manifesto, part of which has been seen by the Guardian, proposes to set up a "stop unit" inside the Cabinet Office responsible for preventing anti-libertarian legislation, including the creation of new criminal offences.

The Liberal Democrats claimed scrapping biometric passports could save £3bn over the course of a parliament, the first time the party has mentioned this saving. It also calls for regulation of closed-circuit television, measures to stop councils spying on people, and new guidelines to prevent unfair extraditions to the US.

The manifesto says the Lib Dems would stop children being fingerprinted at school without their parents' permission and promises to restore the right to protest by reforming the Public Order Act to safeguard non-violent protest.

Restrictions would be introduced to narrow the scope of injunctions and there are proposals to protect free speech and investigative journalism.

The party is in favour of reforms to the English and Welsh libel laws: corporations would have to show damage and prove malice or recklessness to mount a successful court challenge against journalists. The party also calls for a £10,000 cap on individual donations, down from its previous pledge to impose a £50,000 cap.

At the manifesto launch on Wednesday, Clegg will promise to scrap control orders, which can use secret evidence to place people under house arrest, as well as reduce the maximum period of pre-charge detention to 14 days. The second-generation biometric passport, which includes fingerprints, is not due to be scrapped by the Tories, even though they do propose to drop the national identity register.

But the Lib Dems will argue it is not necessary to spend billions of pounds on storing fingerprints in passports, and say Britain already has a type of biometric passport known as an e-passport, which stores 16 facial measurements (along with your name and passport number) in the chip at the back.

Clegg said he would also scrap the communications database for which companies would be paid to store information about everyone's email and internet use, including storing data about what you do on social networking sites such as Facebook and online computer games.

Labour had proposed a massive central database known as the interception modernisation programme to store the details of phone calls, text messages, emails and internet use.

The plans were changed so companies would hold the information at a cost of £2bn to the taxpayer over 10 years, and £800m in the next parliament.

Data protection principles in this country say that data about citizens should only be collected if it is necessary and proportionate.

The Liberal Democrat manifesto says: "Instead of collecting information about every person in this country's internet use, we believe that an alternative approach, based on targeting, warrants from law enforcement agencies and other safeguards is a better approach."