Reform: IDS

Iain Duncan Smith's plans to turn the House of Lords into a senate-style chamber have received backing from a Labour MP but have failed to satisfy his own backbenches.

The Conservative leader had set out plans to drastically increase the number of elected members of the reformed upper House.

In the new second chamber 80 per cent should be elected for a 15-year term - as opposed to the government's planned 20 per cent - with the rest chosen by an independent commission, said Iain Duncan Smith.

"Only bold proposals can challenge this government's increasing contempt for our parliamentary institutions," he wrote in the Sunday Telegraph. "Such a high level of patronage has had a corrupting effect on government."

The existing 92 hereditary peers could keep their titles "but would play no part in making laws".

Duncan Smith accused Labour of creating a "web of cronyism" saying there was "an almost 18th-century feel to Mr Blair's fondness for favouritism" and claimed he had ignored most of Britain as most of the "people's peers" live in London.

His radicalism stopped short of the voting method opting to stay with the first-past-the-post system that serves the Commons.

Duncan Smith, echoed the views of many backbenchers from all sides, saying the new assembly should have only about 300 members - massively less than the current 704 Lords, and half of Labour's planned 600.

But the plans have come under fire from a senior Conservative backbencher.

Sir Patrick Cormack, MP for South Staffordshire, said the logical extension of the plans was a written constitution with the second chamber being given more powers to attract people of "real calibre".

Sir Patrick told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he was "surprised" by the timing of the announcement and dissatisfied with the plans. "I am not happy with them. They are an intelligent and sensible contribution to an important debate but I don't myself like them," he said.

"I believe that if you move in the direction of a fully or almost fully elected House we will have to move in the direction of a written constitution, redistributing powers between the two chambers on a wholly different constitutional set up from that which we now enjoy."

But the Tory leader's proposals received backing from the Labour benches, where there is growing dissatisfaction with the government's plans to allow only a limited number of elected members of the upper House.

Graham Allen, a leading campaigner on constitutional issues, said: "Iain Duncan Smith is more in line with the parliamentary heartbeat than the white paper."

The MP for Nottingham North called on ministers to let MPs and peers make the final decision on how to reform the Lords. "A genuine parliamentary consensus is now on offer. Government should step aside and let parliament find a consensus," he said.