MPs warn: Listen or face disaster

Tony Blair was today warned to start listening to the clamour of complaint from his backbench MPs and from the voters, or face disaster.

The message followed a black Monday for the Government, with ministers forced to face up to a humiliating U-turn over the railways and more than 15,000 job losses in the postal service and elsewhere.

Fresh troubles rolled in at Mr Blair's doorstep today. First across the threshold at No10 were police chiefs and ministers locked in the continuing - and so far unsuccessful - battle against street crime.

The "crime summit" chaired by the Prime Minister was immediately followed by a deputation from farmers, profoundly unhappy at the failure to revive the countryside in the wake of the foot-and-mouth crisis.

Farmers' leaders at No10 will discuss the recommendations of the Policy Commission into the Future of Farming and Food. However, no decisions on farming policy are likely to be announced following the "food summit".

The warning to listen or lose came from former defence minister Peter Kilfoyle. Mr Kilfoyle has been a long-standing and regular critic of the Government but his fears were given force by the fact that they are shared, in public and in private, by large numbers of loyalist MPs as well as those on the old Labour Left.

The Government said the MP, was "going through a very, very rough patch". He warned: "It is essential it listens to its backbenchers, rather than antagonise them."

The doubt and dismay among a substantial section of the Commons rank-and-file was turned up another notch by the sudden announcement today from Chancellor Gordon Brown of new tax concessions for business.

The moves, announced now because the Budget has been delayed, appeared to be little more than a confirmation of changes heralded in the Chancellor's pre-budget report last autumn.

But some Labour MPs saw it as yet another sop to the City, in the wake of yesterday's decision to offer taxpayers' money to bail out Railtrack's shareholders.

Mr Kilfoyle warned that there must be some balancing aid for those in need in the Budget "in order to maintain at least the image of fair play".

MPs dispersed for the Easter break with their challenges to the Government, on a range of confrontations from military action in Iraq to perceived inaction on hunting, still unresolved. The Prime Minister is to face the Parliamentary Labour

Party days after MPs return next month, with party managers already braced for more trouble.

Labour gloom was deepened by the news of the massive job losses - up to 15,000 - at Consignia, with the threat of industrial action from the postal workers unions if there are sackings.

There was also anger over the about-turn by Transport Secretary Stephen Byers, who opened the door for £300 million of taxpayers' money to go to Railtrack shareholders, contradicting his own repeated assurances that there would be no such deal.

Mr Byers doggedly defended the plan in the Commons last night, attempting to present it as "good news for the travelling public". The surrender to the City, as some MPs saw it, dented Mr Byers's support from the backbenches, one of the main factors which has preserved his political skin until now.

Some MPs, however, were pinning the blame on Mr Blair and the Chancellor rather than the Transport Secretary.

Meanwhile, in a cheeky gesture, the European parliament today launched precisely the independent, public inquiry into the foot-and-mouth epidemic which Mr Blair has refused to countenance back home.

In Brussels today, former agriculture minister Nick Brown told the inquiry that coping with last year's outbreak of foot-and-mouth was a bigger logistical exercise for the Government than Britain's involvement in the Gulf War.

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