Blair rules out referendum on euro

Tony Blair will finally rule out an early referendum on the euro next week by dropping legislation from the Queen's Speech.

Plans for a Bill setting out the rules of a national vote have been shelved from the annual list of new laws.

Instead, as a sop to pro-single currency campaigners, the Government will give the euro a scant mention by promising consultations next year on a draft Bill. The move marks defeat for campaigners urging the Prime Minister to risk a referendum before the election.

Mr Blair kept the option for a vote open earlier this year when Chancellor Gordon Brown warned against early entry in his assessment of the five Treasury tests for membership.

"This is now so deep in the long grass that people may wonder if it will ever be revived during Tony Blair's premiership," said one senior Government source.

Ministers are jostling for space in a crowded timetable of up to 32 new Bills in the Queen's Speech next Wednesday.

Other plans in the speech - covering probably the last full parliamentary year before the general election - include university top-up fees, gay marriages and a fresh immigration clampdown.

Downing Street is worried that the crowded timetable next year will leave the Government vulnerable to wrecking tactics, especially in the House of Lords.

The abolition of 92 remaining hereditary peerages has enraged some lords who are threatening to disrupt business in protest.

Unlike the Commons, the Lords has no procedure to cut short debates that overrun, which means peers can create a pile-up to sabotage flagship Bills.

The promised Bill to ban fox-hunting is the most likely target for such tacticsbut ministers are taking advice from constitutional experts on ways to force it through, possibly as a Private Members' Bill.

Other measures set to be announced next week include sweeping new child-protection laws, with a clampdown on internet paedophiles and more stringent checks on childminders.

Backbenchers plan to tag on an amendment banning parents from smacking their children. Another new law will outlaw discrimination against disabled people at work.

And the Treasury is planning to put a £1.4 million cap on executive pension savings, hitting at least 20,000 people.