Lord Irvine will publish a white paper setting out the government's blueprint for a second stage of House of Lords reform on November 7.

The white paper will be followed by a two-month consultation period and is set for a rough ride in parliament.

The plans to remove the 92 remaining hereditary peers will be outlined to peers by Lords leader Lord Williams of Mostyn and to MPs by Commons leader Robin Cook.

His announcement to the House of Lords constitution select committee on Wednesday follows media speculation that plans to limit the prime minister's power to appoint new peers have been ditched.

The white paper is said to contain proposals that no more than a fifth of peers should be elected, with a similar quantity of non-party political "crossbench" peers selected by the independent appointments commission.

The remaining 60 per cent of peers will continue to be allocated on a party political basis, as were the 80 per cent of current life peers in the House of Lords.

Last year's report by Lord Wakeham on the future of the upper house recommended that party political appointees regarded as unsuitable or poorly qualified by the appointments commission could be rejected.

With the lord chancellor restricting the commission's role to that of vetting peers for criminals or those who have "bought" peerages with party political donations, senior Labour figures are reported to be concerned that the government will be left open to charges of "cronyism" when future peers are nominated.

And over 130 backbenchers have signed a motion demanding that the House of Lords be entirely or mostly elected.

Lord Irvine, who has personally overseen Labour's flagship "modernising" legislation and has chaired all but one of the cabinet sub-committees developing constitutional policy, is said to have "watered down" this proposal, limiting the commission's veto to questions of "propriety".

He told the Lords constitution committee that he had sought "consensus" and that the 11 strong cabinet sub-committee considering both the first and second stages of reform had "collectively developed and agreed" the government's policy after "intensive debate".

Tory peer and constitutionalist Lord Alexander also favours the argument that half of the Lords should be elected and in a recent Denning Society lecture argued that Lord Irvine's combined executive, legislative and judicial role in the office of lord chancellor should be disaggregated.

Giving evidence on Wednesday, Irvine defended the political role of the lord chancellor saying criticisms were "not real world politics".

"To be an effective guardian of the independence of the judiciary from encroachments by the executive, I think the most effective is someone within government rather than outside," he said.