Inside Parliament: Nul points against Spanish solo: Family-values accent on Barcelona - Anti-EU forces signal next goal - Hunt marshals jobless statistics

THE Labour leadership candidates John Prescott and Margaret Beckett were both at the Commons despatch box yesterday, but neither scored any points over their government opponents or each other.

Mr Prescott, Labour's employment spokesman, pursued his campaign against 'fiddled' unemployment statistics, while Mrs Beckett tried to embarrass the Prime Minister over Monday's speech in Barcelona by Michael Portillo on family values and responsibilities.

Mrs Beckett, the acting Labour leader, asked if John Major agreed with Mr Portillo, the right-wing Chief Secretary to the Treasury, that in Spain family ties were stronger and there was a greater spirit of local community than in Britain.

To laughter, Mr Major said that he did not have 'the same knowledge of Spain' as the Chief Secretary - whose father is Spanish. It was 'an excellent and serious speech', and one of a series by ministers that addressed concerns of everyone in Britain.

Taking this as an endorsement of Mr Portillo's remarks, Mrs Beckett used her next two shots for the same question. 'After 15 years of Conservative government, if family life in Britain is undermined, why does the Prime Minister think that is the case?'

Mr Major replied: 'All of my right honourable friends are concerned about the role of the family and how to maintain it. For us, family values and family life are central, not only to our national life but to the existence of each and every person in this country.

'What Mr Portillo has made clear, and is self-evidently the case, is that there are many areas of family life that are not the concern of government and in which the government is not the best arbiter.

'We do have a responsibility for providing some vital services, education, health and others, but the reality is the essence of family life lies within the family itself and Mr Portillo is right to draw attention to that.'

Surprisingly, the growing row over Germany's ban on British beef was not raised at Question Time. Christopher Gill, Tory MP for Ludlow, put down a marker that the Euro-sceptics' next goal will be to stop the planned increase in Britain's contribution to the European Union budget. It would be 'difficult to justify' at a time when the defence budget was being drastically pruned, he said.

Geoff Hoon, Labour MP for Ashfield, asked if Mr Major was 'reminded of the career of Frederick Augustus of York, who lost his job as commander-in-chief following disastrous European campaign? Isn't the Prime Minister's problem that he is neither up with those who make and shape European policy, and too often down with those who would have Britain leave the European Union?' But Mr Major dismissed that as pretty hollow from a party he alleges would 'abandon' the veto.

Employment questions followed a familiar pattern. Tory backbenchers received assurances that the Government would resist attempts by Brussels to impose the Social Chapter and give British workers the same rights as their Continental counterparts. And Opposition MPs voiced the suspicion that the jobless figures represent the triumph of statistics over experience.

An impressive part of the despatch performance of David Hunt, Secretary of State for Employment, is the way he fields questions and spews out figures with hardly a reference to notes. 'We will continue our effort to persuade our colleagues in the EU that the only way to create jobs and overcome the rising tide of unemployment elsewhere in Europe is to ensure we have measures to remove and lift burdens on employers,' Mr Hunt said.

His Labour shadow, John Prescott, in contrast, spent the early part of the exchanges scribbling notes. But Malcolm Bruce, for the Liberal Democrats, slipped in first with the question he was working on, asking why yesterday's economic forecast from the Treasury showed that while unemployment had fallen, employment had yet to recover. Was the fall due to 'disillusioned people dropping out of the market' rather than job creation?

Mr Hunt said that, according to the International Labour Organisation, whose figures are favoured by the Opposition, in the 12 months to winter 1993, unemployment fell by 180,000 while employment increased by 147,000. He repeated the figures to Mr Prescott, claiming they disproved his charge that Department of Employment figures were 'just a major fiddle'.

The Minister of State, Michael Forsyth, said of the would-be Labour leader (or deputy): 'He continually makes the same point about the figures, presumably because he is not able to give the Commons any answers as to how he would deliver the full employment he boasts he and his party would achieve.'