LONDON, July 11, 2012 (AFP) - Britain's coalition government's plans to reform the Upper House of Lords on Tuesday cleared their first parliamentary hurdle, but appear to be in disarray after a key motion was earlier dropped.
Some 91 members of the Conservative Party, the two-party coalition's leading partner, rebelled against the main vote to give the bill a second reading but it still passed thanks to support from the Labour opposition.
However, Prime Minister David Cameron was earlier forced to drop the planned vote on a "programme motion" that would have set a timetable for the bill due to pressure from rebel Tories.
The motion would have limited the amount of time that the reforms could be debated in the lower House of Commons to 10 days and it is now feared opponents will be able to filibuster or "talk out" the draft law with marathon speeches.
Jesse Norman, the rebel ringleader, told BBC Radio 4 that the bill was "a dead duck."
"The question is how long will the government go on before it recognises that and how much further will it have to go in putting the country through a lot of additional pain when the real energies of parliament and the government should be focused on fixing the howling economic gale that we are now in," he said.
The Tory leadership's climbdown on the timetable motion threatens to create tensions with its coalition partners, the centrist Liberal Democrats, who have heavily backed the reforms which would create a smaller and mainly elected upper house and remove its last hereditary peers.
Announcing the move, George Young, the Leader of the Commons, blamed the opposition Labour Party for siding with the Conservative rebels and said a new timetable would be put forward later this year.
He voiced confidence that the reform bill itself would pass, while adding that it "needs those who support reform to vote for reform and to vote for that reform to make progress through this house.
"It is clear that the opposition are not prepared to do that, so we will not move the programme motion tonight," he explained
Around 70 rebel Conservative MPs signed a letter on Monday warning that the bill would "pile a constitutional crisis on top of an economic crisis" and calling for it to be given "full and unrestricted" scrutiny.
The Liberal Democrats have threatened to block key Conservative-driven plans to make constituency sizes more equal if Cameron's party halts Lords reform.
On Monday, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, had to raise his voice over Conservative jeers in the Commons as he defended the bill.
"This bill is about fixing a flawed institution," Clegg said.
Britain is "one of only two countries in the world -- the other being Lesotho -- with an upper parliamentary chamber which is totally unelected and which selects its members by birthright and patronage," he added.
Under the proposed reforms, 80 percent of the upper chamber would be elected, while its more than 800-strong membership would be reduced to 450.
Critics say that elected membership of the upper house, which scrutinises legislation before it passes, could undermine the supremacy of the House of Commons.
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