UK Seeks House Of Lords Reform After Sleaze Row

Justice Minister Jack Straw said new rules were needed to properly punish impropriety.

Britain's Labour government said on Sunday it wanted to reform parliament's unelected House of Lords to allow any member found guilty of corruption to be expelled.

Parliamentary investigations have started into allegations that four Labour members of the Lords were ready to take payments to try to amend laws in a scandal that has shattered the upper house of parliament's austere image.

Justice Minister Jack Straw said new rules were needed to properly punish impropriety.

"We want to see very, very clear laws brought in that deal with misconduct by members of the House of Lords so that if they commit a criminal offence or something else which is wholly improper then they can be expelled," Straw told Sky TV.

The House of Lords acts as a revising chamber for laws passed in the lower House of Commons.

Its rules ban any form of advocacy by its members. Known as peers, they do not receive a salary for their work, but are paid an attendance allowance and expenses.

Major changes in 1999 to make the House of Lords more democratic sidelined most of Britain's hereditary peers. It currently features senior clergymen, judges, non-political figures, political appointees and a small group of hereditary peers elected internally.

"The House of Lords has been left in limbo by shambolic and half-hearted reform. The appointment of peers by a transparent process rather than political patronage is a matter of the highest priority," former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey wrote in the News of the World newspaper.

"We must ensure that the second chamber is not merely packed with career politicians, but with people of probity and integrity from every walk of like."

While any further far-reaching changes in the red leather upholstered chamber -- such as making it fully elected -- remain unlikely for now, the scandal has boosted appetite for reform.

"An unelected second chamber in the 21st century, with no direct link to the people it serves, raises serious questions of legitimacy," Straw wrote in the Sunday Times newspaper.

"Much of the work of the Lords as a revising chamber is high quality. But the public rightly demands a greater degree of accountability."