David Cameron accused Gordon Brown of cheating the voters and stoking cynicism about politics yesterday as he attacked the Government’s refusal to offer a referendum on the Lisbon treaty.

MPs rejected the Conservative proposal by 311 votes to 248 votes last night, after a six-hour debate. The result means that Parliament will decide whether to ratify the treaty, signed by EU leaders last December.

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, suffered most from rebellions against the party line, with 13 of his 63 MPs ignoring orders to abstain on the vote, inclduing three who resigned from the front bench. Mr Brown also faced a substantial revolt, with 29 Labour MPs supporting a referendum.

The Conservative leader, three of whose MPs would later vote with the Government, goaded Mr Brown during Prime Minister’s Questions. He asked him twice whether his refusal to agree to the referendum was because he feared that voters would reject the treaty if it were put to a vote. “Does he not understand that this is one of the reasons why our political system is so badly broken?

“All three main parties in this House made a promise to our constituents for a vote on the EU constitution. When we turn around and say, ‘You can’t have it any more’, it is no wonder people feel cheated and cynical because promises are being made and broken.”

Mr Brown insisted that Labour’s manifesto pledge to hold a referendum applied to Europe’s previous proposed constitution, not to the Lisbon treaty, and accused Mr Cameron of appeasing sceptics within the Conservative Party.

“If his party had truly changed and moved to the centre, he would be standing up to his backbenchers. He would be leading them instead of following them,” Mr Brown told MPs.

“He would be standing up to the Eurosceptics instead of appeasing them, and he would be moving to the centre of Europe instead of being left at the margins of Europe.”

Mr Clegg said that it was Mr Brown who was “colluding with the anti-European Conservatives”, and attacked the Tories and Labour for having voted against the Lib Dem preference for a ballot on Britain’s EU membership. “The Prime Minister talks about leadership, but the fact is that he has bottled it and, as far as I can make out, the leader of the Conservatives wants to leave the European Union but has not got the guts to say it,” Mr Clegg told MPs.

“Is not the truth that this country will never lead in Europe until politicians who believe in the European Union have the courage to stand up for it, and politicians who want to leave it are flushed out in an honest debate on our membership?”

Mr Brown ridiculed the Lib Dems for having walked out of the Commons last week in a protest over Commons procedure and told the Lib Dem leader: “I agree with him that we need to put the pro-European case in the country, but I have to say that to go back to the 1970s and relive a referendum in the 1970s is not the way to plan for the future.”

Later, as MPs began the eleventh day of debate on the European Union (Amendment) Bill, whose committee stage is being taken on the floor of the Commons, the Conservatives’ amendment for a referendum on the treaty was moved by William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary.

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