Inside Parliament: Smith makes late entry into EU votes row: Major accused of trying to face both ways - Backbenchers support

John Smith, the Labour leader, yesterday stepped into the fray over European Union voting power for the first time in the Commons, accusing John Major of being more concerned to protect himself from attackers within the Tory party than fighting for Britain's lasting interest.

Mr Smith had seemed reluctant to get involved. A week ago at Question Time he asked about car perks for health service managers, and on Tuesday pursued the advance payment of gas and electricity bills to avoid VAT - worthy forays but hardly going for the Prime Minister's jugular.

Mr Major clearly expected a Euro-challenge on that last encounter and was left delivering his prepared riposte - denouncing Mr Smith as 'Monsieur Oui, the poodle of Brussels' - in reply to a Labour backbencher.

With European foreign ministers heading for Greece this weekend to try and resolve the impasse over voting in an enlarged EU, the Prime Minister received fervent backbench support for his stand against eroding Britain's blocking power.

Dame Jill Knight, MP for Birmingham Edgbaston, said qualified majority voting in the EU should be considered strictly on merit. 'Is it not right to argue robustly for a more democratic system and to fight our corner rather than throw away Britain's hand like Labour would do?'

Mr Major said the Government was strongly committed to enlargement and also to the long- term success of the union. 'But to be successful, the countries of the community must be responsive to the individuals and peoples within the community.

'I believe we are right to argue vigorously for principles that are important for Britain and for Europe's future . . . We need a balanced decision which safeguards the rights of minorities.'

Representatives of 30 per cent of the community's population could be voted down when Britain entered. Now it was 40 per cent, Mr Major said. 'Automatic and unqualified extension to 27 (from 23 votes) would perpetuate that trend and I believe it should be checked now. In 1996 we need a proper and wholesale reform of the system.'

Mr Smith asked why there was 'such confusion' over the Government's policy on Europe - and supplied his own answer. 'Is it not because the Prime Minister one day seeks to appease the anti-European faction in his party, and on the succeeding day seeks to reassure the pro- European faction? Why is he, as usual, seeking to face both ways?'

Mr Major said no one had the faintest idea where Mr Smith stood on the issue. It was absurd to suggest that arguing for better decision-making in Europe was not the right approach. 'It isn't called anti-European when the Italians argue their case on milk quotas. It isn't called anti-European when the French hold up enlargement of the number of seats for their interests. We are arguing for points of principle we consider of importance, and we will continue to do so.'

But Mr Smith said enlargement was being put at risk by a 'wholly damaging dispute' which was, at most, about four votes out of 90. Mr Major was putting at risk the accession of four friends of Britain who would be net contributors to the budget.

'Is not the truth of this whole affair that the Prime Minister is more concerned to protect himself and his position from attacks from within his own party, than he is in fighting for Britain's real and lasting interest in the EU?'

To Labour jeers, Mr Major retorted: 'That is unworthy of Mr Smith. If that had been remotely true, I would not have stuck, as I did, to the importance of carrying the Maastricht treaty through this House.'

The Government was a strong supporter of entry by Norway, Sweden, Finland and Austria, but that did not mean each and every aspect of the negotiations must be conceded to ensure it. 'There is time to resolve qualified majority voting without any delay to enlargement.' In Brussels, Douglas Hurd, the Foreign Secretary, had described several possible avenues to a solution. 'As long as the political will is there, with others as well as the UK, that could be settled within a matter of days.'

It will take longer to reshape the Common Agricultural Policy to suit Gillian Shephard, Minister of Agriculture, who goes to Brussels on Monday for the annual talks on farm subsidies. British farmers had already been brought 'closer to the market', she said during a debate on the CAP. Next she wants reforms to cut subsidies on wine, fruit and vegetables, sugar and olive oil.

Earlier, during Agriculture Questions, the talk had been not of Brussels horse-trading but of horse-eating. Tory Harry Greenway, a council member of the British Horse Society, demanded a promise from the well-insulated food minister, Nicholas Soames, that he would never eat horse. 'In this country we have no tradition of eating horses,' said the equestrian member for Ealing North. 'Our history, our culture and our fame was built on the backs of horses.'

Mr Soames, noted trencherman though he is, readily obliged. 'I have never, and I will never, eat a horse. To eat horse is something that is entirely alien to the people of Britain. We do not eat horses, but in the excellent single market to which we belong, we have to acknowledge that some of our friends have strange habits.'

The Government's friends in the Lords have developed a habit of joining with the opposition and inflicting defeats on the Police and Magistrates' Courts Bill. Only a shadow of its former self, the Bill completed its passage last night, but not before peers had knifed it again.

The Bill provided for the abolition of the ranks of superintendent and chief inspector, but by 133 votes to 107 during the Third Reading debate, a cross-party amendment was carried to allow only one of the two ranks to be scrapped.

Pressure from senior figures such as Lord Whitelaw and Lord Taylor, the Lord Chief Justice, has already forced a string of retreats from, among others, plans for Home Office-controlled police authorities and performance- related pay for justices' clerks.

In an item in this column yesterday on armed forces acting for the United Nations, support for the Gurkhas as peacekeepers should have been attributed to Lord Holme of Cheltenham. It was he, not Lord Callaghan of Cardiff, who said that instead of being subjected to 'death by a thousand cuts' the Brigade of Gurkhas should be used to keep the international peace.

(Photograph omitted)