The government has today published a white paper setting out its blueprint for the second stage of House of Lords reform.

"The House of Lords - Completing the reform" white paper will be followed by a two or three-month consultation period and is set for a rough ride in both houses of parliament.

Speaking in the commons, leader Robin Cook said of the white paper: "Never again will it be possible for a government to make political appointments predominantly from their own party supporters as the party opposite did throughout the eighties and nineties.

"Parliament belongs to the British people. It is right that we should now consult the British people on the design of a second chamber of their parliament."

However, shadow leader of the commons, Eric Forth, described the proposals as "an insult and an absurdity", criticising the short period of time for scrutiny.

Conservative leader of the Lords, Lord Strathclyde, has warned that Tony Blair will meet with stiff opposition from peers.

"He will pay a heavy price if he tries to persuade the British people that parliament should spend yet more of its time on constitutional change on which he has made no effort to seek the agreement of the other parties," he warned. "What we are seeing now is the unfolding ambition of the Labour Party to seek to control the second chamber as effectively as they control the first."

And Lib Dem Commons spokesman Paul Tyler predicts that the reforms will split Labour's parliamentary ranks.

"There is a battle of wills going on inside the government over Lords reform. They are fighting like ferrets in a sack," he said.

The prime minister's spokesman was quick to reject suggestions that Blair did not consider Lords reform important and said "there will be further opportunities" for reformers in the white paper stage of consultation.

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

Publication confirms 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 and will set details for regional elections. A similar quantity of non-party political "crossbench" peers will be selected by the independent appointments commission.

Eventually there will be around 100 elected members and between 400 and 500 appointees in the new-look second chamber. Substantially fewer elected peers than the 35 per cent (190) recommended in last year's report by Lord Wakeham on the future of the upper house.

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 ofLords.

Wakeham 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 Commons backbenchers - including 117 Labour MPs -have signed Fiona Mactaggart's motion demanding that the House of Lords be entirely or mostly elected.

Conservative leader in the Lords, Lord Strathclyde, attacked the government's lack of consultation and apparent absence of principle.

"Tony Blair is dictating what other parties will take and it won't do. If election is the right principle, why not more? If it is wrong why have any?" he said. "Our test will be does it break with the culture of cronyism? Does it maintain or increase the powers of the Lords? And will it introduce meaningful democracy? If not, the government will have to think again.''

Former Labour MP and constitutional expert Tony Benn accused Blair of having a "medieval" outlook to democracy and reform.

"What the prime minister has done is to modernise the House of Lords back to the 14th century. Because when peerages were first introduced they were not hereditary, they only became hereditary about a hundred years later. So the prime minister has thrown us back to what a medieval king did, put them in, and just replace them with new appointments," he told the BBC.

But Labour MP Gerald Kaufman, who was deputy chairman of the Wakeham commission, defended the government's plan arguing that it will prevent any one political party form gaining a majority and will increase the number of under-represented groups in political institutions.

"Twenty per cent would be members of no party, with no government control whatever of people who came into the House of Lords, with 30 per cent of women rising to 50 per cent, with far greater representation of the ethnic minorities, with representation of religions other than the Church of England," he told the BBC. "Now that is a real reform, not this mucking around on the fringes that people like Lord Strathclyde are suggesting."

The government is also set to recommend Lord Wakeham's proposals that the Lords lose its veto over secondary legislation, instead having powers to delay statutory instruments for three months.

Powers to delay ministerial orders would be two edged, both as a curb to peer power and as a convenience to government, as it would replace a convention that the Lords do not challenge secondary legislation and leave avenues open for government to use statutory instruments to impose thousands of regulations following primary legislation.

Reformers view the change as giving greater influence to the Lords by avoiding the "nuclear option" of a rarely used veto but being able to force the government to think again.

Lord Strathclyde has attacked the proposal: "By hiding behind the fig leaf of token democracy, the government wants to reduce the powers of the House of Lords," he said.