Brown wins crunch vote after long day of desperate ‘bribes’

Gordon Brown narrowly won Wednesday night's controversial vote in the House of Commons on the extension of detention without charge for suspected terrorists from 28 to 42 days.

In the event, only three of the 40 rebel Labour MPs came round to the Government and it took a bizarre coalition of Tory Ann Widdecombe, one UKIP MP and all nine MPs from the Democratic Unionist Party to help Brown win by a margin of 315 to 306.

Before the Commons debate, Brown had been promising his backbenchers everything from compensation for those wrongly held on terror charges to lifting EU sanctions on Cuba in a desperate bid to win the vote.

The DUP denied being offered the proceeds of the sale of MoD bases in Northern Ireland, but were widely believed to be meeting Brown to discuss the Ulster equivalent of 'Danegeld' for their votes.

The most bizarre of a long list of bribes was the lifting of sanctions on Cuba. With George Bush arriving on Sunday, the timing is unfortunate for Brown, but he was desperate and he told left-wing MPs including Colin Burgon that he would be urging the Slovenian presidency of the EU to put the lifting of sanctions against Cuba on the agenda for next week.

He is also said to have offered a seat on the Intelligence and Security Committee to the DUP, whose nine votes were crucial tonight. Yorkshire MPs were offered compensation for miners who feel they have been let down by their lawyers creaming off the state compensation scheme.

MPs who have never been called by Brown suddenly had Downing Street ringing up for a friendly chat. Others were invited over to Number Ten in the run-up to the vote to see whether there was anything Brown could do to assist them in their constituencies?

Mohammed Sarwar had a letter from Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, offering 'exceptional ex-gratia' compensation for anyone arrested and held for 42 days and subsequently freed without charge. There were rumours that it would be worth £3,000 a day or £15,000 a week, equivalent to the earnings of lower league football players, but the letter did not actually spell out the sum. Grant Shapps, the Tory MP, privately told colleagues he had had a constituent ringing to ask whether it would apply retrospectively. It will not.

Andrew Robathan, the Tory MP, joked in the chamber about rumours that the Labour chairman of the home affairs committee, Keith Vaz, was due for a knighthood, after switching his vote to back the Government. 'Sir Keith' said he hadn't heard about it, so far.

Brown was also using loyal MPs as go-betweens with the die-hard rebels. One Labour MP complained: "I got a phone call from Number Ten while I was caravanning saying the Prime Minister would like a word. I couldn't understand it, because I had supported 90 days, but then I realised they wanted me to persuade a friend of mine to vote for the Government."

Jon Trickett, a centre-left Labour MP, was won over with concessions on the anti-terror Bill about future Parliamentary scrutiny. Paul Farrelly's mother was phoned by Number Ten, and was so worried she is said to have telephoned her son to say: "The Prime Minister wants to speak to you - are you all right?"

Pork-barrel politics has happened before - a compensation for miners was promised to the Welsh Nats by Jim Callaghan to try to hold together his failing Labour Government in 1978. But Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Lib Dem leader, said: "What the devil has this to do with anti-terrorism legislation?"

THE MOLE: 42 DAYS VOTE

FIRST POSTED JUNE 11, 2008