Two Tory shadow ministers resign

Duncan Smith only appointed his team last month

The Conservative Party is playing down the resignations of two of the party's frontbench spokesmen just weeks after they were given their jobs.

Local government spokesman Nick Gibb and James Cran, who shadowed the Leader of the Commons' office, announced they were quitting their posts on Wednesday night.

A Tory official said their decisions were "not unusual" but neither of the MPs has given interviews to explain their sudden departures.

Sources close to Mr Gibb, who supported Michael Portillo's leadership challenge, say he resigned his job because he wanted to speak on a wider range of issues, including identity cards.

Cran has given no reasons for resigning

The Bognor Regis and Littlehampton MP is also expected to be nominated for a position on influential Commons Public Accounts Select Committee.

The resignations came as both Tory and Labour MPs defied their respective party leaderships during a debate on Europe in the Commons on Wednesday.

Former Tory Education Minister Robert Jackson backed the Labour government in ratifying the Nice Treaty, which paves the way for the enlargement of the European Union.

The pro-European, who backed Kenneth Clarke in the Tory leadership contest, said he felt it was his "essential duty" and in Britain's interests to back it.

Mr Jackson said that Tory opposition to the Nice Treaty was "a hangover from the party's previous discredited European policy".

'Overheated rhetoric'

He said that the new Tory party seemed to have grasped that the rhetoric of the last four years "about the threat of the development of a European superstate was overheated".

But he added that this had not yet "trickled down" to all parts of the backbenches.

European policy is not thought to be a reason for the departures of Mr Cran and Mr Gibb, both of whom voted with Mr Duncan Smith against ratifying the treaty.

The Bill cleared the Commons on Wednesday by 392 to 158 votes.

Former Labour front-bencher Denzil Davies voted against the government, as did Labour MP Dennis Skinner.

Gibb wants to speak on a wider range of issues

Eurosceptic Labour figures Frank Field and Austin Mitchell were among those absent for the vote, as were Tory pro-Europeans Ken Clarke and Ian Taylor.

As MPs debated the treaty ratification bill - at its third reading stage in the Commons - Mr Davies said British democratic power was being "transferred" to a centralised Europe.

The Nice Treaty would "continue and accelerate" the "transfer of power from this House to the central institutions of the European Union", he added.

Terror fight boost

Opening the debate earlier on Wednesday, Europe Minister Peter Hain said an enlarged EU would help the fight against international terrorism.

He warned Tory Eurosceptics the treaty was "the only show in town" if they believed in EU enlargement.

If we are to defeat the terrorists we need the bigger, stronger Europe that enlargement will bring

Europe Minister Peter Hain

Attacking the party's policy of opposing Nice, Mr Hain said the opposition frontbench were not so much "anti-Europe as want to be out of Europe".

"I think they want to wreck Europe and I think they want to wreck this bill," he said.

Flexibility fear

But shadow foreign secretary Michael Ancram said the Conservatives were opposing the bill because it failed to provide for a "flexible" European Union.

"We believe that the treaty agreed at Nice fails even to achieve the aims that the government itself set out to achieve," he said.

Mr Ancram suggested that if the supporters of greater EU integration had their way, the coalition of countries in the war against terrorism could not have been possible.

For the Liberal Democrats - who are backing the bill - Menzies Campbell warned that without further changes the EU could become "unmanageable" before long.

The bill should be "passed as soon as possible and the Treaty should be ratified as soon as possible", Mr Campbell added.

The Bill now goes to the Lords and the Government hopes it will become law in the new year.