Major `open to blackmail on spending'

The Government has laid itself open to blackmail by any backbencher who chooses to apply pressure, Labour's campaigns spokesman, Brian Wilson, said yesterday after the disclosure that Tory MP Nicholas Winterton had forced the Transport minister, John Watts, to reprieve an pounds 8m road in his constituency.

With the Government's majority reduced to one, the maverick Macclesfield MP in effect held the Government to ransom before the vote on the Budget. The Department of Transport yesterday confirmed that Mr Watts had put the improvements on the A523 between Macclesfield and Poynton back into the roads programme.

Having secured his road, Mr Winterton happily voted with the Government. But now two Tory MPs are on the warpath over their local hospital.

The Department of Health will face renewed pressure tomorrow in a Commons debate for the rescue of the casualty unit at Edgware Hospital in north London by Sir John Gorst and Hugh Dykes, who caused a fuss over the threatened closure of the hospital last summer. Mr Gorst privately made it clear he would be prepared to vote against the Government if something was not done, and he was furious when the news leaked out.

Stephen Dorrell, the Secretary of State for Health, was engaged in heavy negotiations with the MPs and announced in the summer that there would be a 24-hour casualty unit, GP supervision instead of nurses, maternity provision and beds for the elderly. But MPs reported that Mr Gorst was engaged in a heated conversation with Mr Dorrell during a division on the Budget. One ministerial source said: "He wants to a retain a full acute hospital. Whether he ... will cause trouble to the Government, we will have to see."

John Horam, the Health minister, is due to answer the debate but last night the Government had no plans to improve its offer. Judging by the success of Mr Winterton, it can only be a matter of time.

John Major's majority could be wiped out by the Barnsley East by-election next Thursday, and Tory MPs could be lining up with the shopping list of constituency demands. The most pressing case, however, is for the Ulster Unionists, on whose support Mr Major will have to depend to ensure that the Government survives until a general election.

There are three big items on the Ulster Unionists' shopping list: no surrender to the IRA in the peace talks in Ulster; urgent action on the electricity interconnector between Scotland and Northern Ireland; and the lifting of the ban on beef exports from Northern Ireland.