Major ups Maastricht stakes: Conservative rebels told by Hurd that treaty will not be ratified if Labour's amendment on Social Chapter is carried

THE Government dramatically raised the stakes over Maastricht by declaring yesterday that it would refuse to ratify the European union treaty if Tory rebels and opposition parties reinstated the Social Chapter.

Douglas Hurd, the Foreign Secretary, said there was 'no question of us ratifying a treaty other than the one we negotiated'. 'We are not actually going to allow the socialists at Westminster to thrust upon us something that the Prime Minister avoided at Maastricht.'

Last year the Government won EC agreement to a British opt-out from the treaty's Social Chapter, believing that its provisions on workers' rights would make British industry less competitive. Anti-Maastricht Tories are threatening to support a Labour amendment to the Bill ratifying the treaty that would set aside the opt-out.

The decision to take on the rebels directly was made yesterday by the Prime Minister, Mr Hurd and the Chief Whip, Richard Ryder. But many MPs' immediate reaction was that the Government had miscalculated by offering the rebels what they wanted - the chance to kill the treaty. One said it was 'an invitation to the rebels to go ahead'.

The threat was aimed at breaking Liberal Democrat support for the Social Chapter, while causing cracks in Labour ranks. But there was little evidence that would work, with ministers and Tory MPs saying last night that the high-risk strategy raised questions about John Major's leadership.

MPs were openly discussing the possibility that it could be a crisis too many for Mr Major. 'He's lacking leadership, and this shows how weak he is,' said one.

Mr Major's press office said the move 'made clear to the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties what game they were playing now' - losing the treaty not just for the UK but for the whole of Europe, as all twelve countries have to ratify it.

With the key vote several weeks away, Mr Major is hoping that his threat to wreck the whole treaty will lead to pressure from Europe on the opposition parties not to push the Government to defeat.

But George Robertson, Labour's European spokesman, dismissed the Government's threat as 'a game of bluff', saying it was 'impossible to conceive of the British government destroying the treaty for the whole community simply because the British Parliament disagrees with the British government on the Social Chapter opt-out'.

And Paddy Ashdown, the Liberal Democrat leader, said his party, with a manifesto commitment to the Social Chapter, still intended to vote for Labour's amendment. 'If the Government then kills the Bill by its own hand, I think it will have committed an act which makes Mr Major's own position simply untenable.'

Pro-Maastricht Labour MPs also made clear they would not be frightened off. Giles Radice, MP for Durham North, said: 'This is a crisis for Mr Major's government, not for the Labour Party.'

Labour mocked Mr Major's threat to ignore 'the sovereign will of Parliament' when he had made so much of putting the treaty before it.

Government sources made clear that a defeat in the current Commons committee stage could still be overturned at report stage or in the Lords.

Mr Hurd attacked the rebels for 'voting as socialists' if they backed the amendment, and Michael Howard, the least enthusiastic Cabinet backer of Maastricht, was fielded to accuse the rebels of 'deeply cynical behaviour' if they voted with Labour for something that all Tories believed would damage jobs and prosperity.

Lord Tebbit, a former party chairman, raised the temperature further by urging colleagues to vote with Labour, decribing the treaty as 'that foul abomination, that running sore of Britain's politics, John Major's political tar baby, John Smith's self-imposed ball and chain, the crumbling altar of the xenophobic paranoiac world of Monsieur Delors'.

Lord Tebbit, speaking at a Commons press gallery luncheon, said the treaty was already out-dated, making ratification a 'necrophiliac act'.

The Conservative rebels were embarrassed by what they saw as over-the-top language. James Cran, MP for Beverly, said: 'It is not going to help us defeat this particular Bill'.

They continued their technical argument that the Labour amendment would not force the Social Chapter on Britain but remove it for the rest of Europe by forcing renegotiation and reratification.

Treaty in peril 9

Leading article, letters 24

Andrew Marr 25

Commentary 27

(Photograph omitted)