Reformists angered as Lords shakeup delayed until after election

Proposals to halve the number of peers and make them elected, salaried and even sackable will be delayed until after the next election, the government said yesterday.

The justice secretary, Jack Straw, outlined the latest plans to parliament nearly a century after his predecessors first attempted the reform in 1911. But he infuriated reformists, saying his suggestions were merely designed to "generate further debate" and were not a "final blueprint".

Straw's proposals included slashing the number of members from the current 745 to "not more than 400-450 and maybe less". The current remaining 92 hereditary peers would not survive these proposals.

Instead, peers would be elected at the time of a general election to serve "a single, non-renewable term of three electoral cycles" - the same as serving 12 to 15 years - and would be paid a salary of up to £60,000, less than that of an MP. The white paper left the voting system used to elect them open to debate.

In the case of a fully elected second chamber, Straw raised the possibility that no seats would be reserved - which would mean an end to bishops in the Lords - though he proposed that their "representation could continue" in a partially appointed upper house.

Straw also confirmed reports the government was "attracted" to the American "recall ballot" scheme whereby a peer could be disqualified for incompetence.

To maintain the primacy of the Commons, Straw said peers' serving single, non-renewable terms from large constituencies would make them distinct. He also said: "There would be staggered elections to a reformed chamber, with a third of its members returned at each election. In this way, the electoral basis of the reformed second chamber could never, as a whole, be more recent than that of this house."

Yesterday's white paper was the second published by the government since it renewed its pledge to reform the Lords at the 2005 general election.

Last March, the Commons voted by a majority of 113 to reform the upper house to 100% elected, but that legislation was blocked by the House of Lords itself, which voted in favour of an entirely appointed upper chamber.

Yesterday's proposals are the product of 17 months of cross-party negotiations.

A government spokesman described yesterday's white paper as a "significant step forward in the long and tortuous process of House of Lords reform".

Speaking in the Commons, the shadow justice secretary, Nick Herbert, said the Tories would prefer still fewer peers than the diminished number proposed by the government - perhaps up to 300 - and expressed disappointment that the government had refused to adopt the name "senate", as had been proposed in evidence given to the cross-party group. The Liberal Democrat Simon Hughes spoke of a "coalition of the committed".

Yesterday a government spokesman explained that a reluctance to use the Parliament Act to force through the will of the Commons was one of the reasons for not going ahead with legislation before an election. He said: "If you have a manifesto commitment, which is crucial, then it is really very difficult for the Lords to oppose the will of the people."

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