The fight facing Brown | Sketch | Red Box blog | The concessions | Analysis | Cameron the winner

Sweeteners for Northern Ireland and a peerage for the Rev Ian Paisley, dropping sanctions on Cuba and the governorship of Bermuda were among the offers the Government is thought to have used to secure Gordon Brown’s victory in yesterday’s vote.

MPs claimed that “pork-barrel politics” had come to Britain after the Government offered a string of concessions and “bribes” to secure victory.

The Democratic Unionists and the Government denied that a “deal” had been done to secure the support of the party’s nine votes. But it emerged that the DUP had been given an assurance that backbench MPs seeking to use the embryology Bill to remove the bar on abortion in Northern Ireland would be stopped. The Northern Ireland Office insisted that this was already the Government’s position.

Also on the DUP wish list were the profits from the sale of redundant Ministry of Defence sites and a £200 million water bill to be funded by London while the Province introduces its own water charges. Third on the list was a financial shortfall identified for the transfer of policing and justice powers to Stormont as part of the devolution measures. Sources in Belfast said that a peerage for Mr Paisley had also been discussed.

The Conservatives said last night that all this might add up to £1.2 billion for the DUP’s support of the Prime Minister’s Bill.

Not that supporting a Bill on locking up terrorist suspects would have been difficult for the DUP. But it nevertheless seems unlikely that, given the corner Mr Brown found himself in, the DUP would not have used it to their advantage.

The Northern Ireland Office also sent a letter ten days ago to the Province’s party leaders, effectively stating that the 1967 Abortion Act legalising terminations would not be extended to the Province – an issue that unites political opinion there.

Although many of the concessions had little to do with the precharge detention Bill, the Government confirmed that it would examine compensation for those wrongly held under this new legislation.

There were suggestions that this could be worth up to £3,000 a day, for every day that suspects are held in cells over 28 days, with a maximum payout of £42,000.

Yorkshire miners are thought to have won a pledge from the Prime Minister that their campaign for compensation for 5,000 former miners with lung disease would get a favourable hearing.

Two members of the all-party Cuba group were told that the Government would not oppose attempts to lift European sanctions at a meeting of EU foreign ministers next week.

Diane Abbott suggested in the Commons that the governorship of Bermuda might be up for grabs, while there were hints that Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, was offered a knighthood, although this was strongly denied.

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, said: “This was a sacrifice of principle to save the skin of a sinking Prime Minister. It’s a victory of pork-barrel politics over principle. I have not heard why, on a matter of principle, the DUP was suddenly in favour of 42 days.”

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