Legislation for the long-term - or campaigning for the spring? The Queen's Speech

Major fury at `lectures' from Blair

The Prime Minister responded furiously to Tony Blair's attack on his Government for "fracturing" society, saying he was "not inclined to accept sanctimonious lectures" from the Labour leader.

Opening five days of Commons debate on yesterday's Queen's Speech, Mr Blair said: "If our society is torn and fractured as it is, I ask who in part fractured it?" Mr Blair pointed at the Government benches: "They did".

He went on: "All the fine words of ministers will not mend it. We will mend this fractured society when those that fractured it, those that said that there was no such thing as society are no longer governing our society."

John Major replied, in an exchange which could herald a bitterly hostile parliamentary ses- sion lasting until a May election: "I think any politician should be very cautious about cloaking himself in righteousness.

"I don't know how the Right Honourable Gentleman can disclaim responsibility for faults in society today, when his own Labour Party has consistently championed every fashionable, politically-correct cause that has undermined our traditional way of life, and opposed every measure we have taken to redress the balance."

According to advisers, the Prime Minister was incensed by press coverage suggesting that proposals by Frances Lawrence, widow of the murdered headmaster, Philip Lawrence, were part of a left-wing "moral crusade" led by the churches and the Labour Party.

It is understood Mr Major met Mrs Lawrence some weeks ago to discuss her views, and feels Mr Blair has attempted to adopt her "manifesto" late in the day. Mr Major allowed his irritation to show when he said: "Let me remind you that it was Labour councils that banned competitive sports in schools, undermined traditional teaching approaches and sponsored every anti-establishment pressure group they could find."

And he responded to Labour heckling on the question of personal choice by launching a personal attack on Mr Blair. When a Labour MP shouted, "Tell that to the parents", Mr Major replied: "Well, some parents have noted that [the widening of choice] for themselves. Some parents have moved their children from high-spending Islington." Mr Blair's son attends a grant-maintained school eight miles from his home in Islington.

Mr Major went on: "If there are problems in society, the Right Honourable Gentleman might look at poor-performing Labour authorities as one of the roots of those problems." This picked up the theme of Conservative barracking of Mr Blair on education, when Tory MPs shouted that it was Labour that ran education authorities up and down the country.

On the Government's record on crime, the health service, the economy and education, Mr Blair said: "It is as if they had just landed from Mars, as if they had been in exile for 17 years and had just discovered how shabby things are." He said cutting dole payments to 16- and 17-year-olds, homelessness and cuts in training places contributed to a fractured society.

But he provoked uproar on the Tory benches when he went on: "When that part of our society that can afford to takes private health care, sends their children to private schools, shuns public transport - yes, because they cannot tolerate the waiting times, the mixed quality, the degeneration of public transport. Doesn't that contribute to the fracturing of our society?"

He attacked cuts in top income tax rates and rises in tax on fuel which caused old-age pensioners to pause before lighting the fire.

Mr Major accused the Leader of the Opposition of making a "brazen speech", contrasting Mr Blair's "sweeping generalisations" with his search for "practical solutions often to complex problems". He said: "To over-simplify is to deceive and not to engage with the real problems." He said Mr Blair had been "evasive and misleading about his policies".

But it was the Tory backbencher, Marion Roe, MP for Broxbourne and chairman of the all-party health select committee, who succeeded in forcing Mr Blair on to the defensive. She intervened in his speech to ask if he would match the Prime Minister's promise to the Tory conference in Bournemouth this month to spend more on the NHS in real terms every year.

"Those commitments have been shown to be utterly worthless," Mr Blair said. Proclaiming last Labour government's record, he said if the Tories want to "pit their commitment to the NHS against ours, let them call a general election and let the people decide".

Mrs Roe's intervention followed Mr Blair's recitation of his charges against the Government's health policy. "Drift has never been more in evidence or more damaging than in the National Health Service," he said.

But the Labour leader is believed to be having private discussions with Gordon Brown, the shadow chancellor, about how to respond to Mr Major's pledge, which was identical to the pledge before the last election, which has been kept. Labour MPs say it is "inconceivable" they would not match the promise, but Mr Blair avoided a direct answer.

In his speech, Mr Major played down expectations of tax cuts. He said the "meaty" Queen's Speech would be followed by a "prudent" Budget next month. "If we can safely cut taxes, we will. If we cannot, we will not," he said, but repeated: "If we cannot, we will not."

Paddy Ashdown, leader of the Liberal Democrats, said: "If the Chancellor does cut taxes this autumn, he will be doing so for purely poli-tical purposes ...If Labour cannot find the courage to oppose them, they are colluding in that." Mr Ashdown added: "If ever a Queen's Speech revealed a Government in its tormented, twilight days, it is this rag-bag of irrelevant measures. This is a speech driven more by what will wrongfoot the Opposition, than what is right for the country."