The Conservative leader in the Lords has said the government can expect business in the upper house to be a "shambles" this year.

Lord Strathclyde used a newspaper interview on Monday to predict mayhem as ministers try to remove the 92 remaining hereditary peers from the second chamber.

The shadow Cabinet member said peers were angry at the lack of plans for future stages of Lords reform and were unwilling to leave the House as a body made up entirely by the prime minister's patronage.

This anger was likely to spill over into other areas of the legislative programme as well as constitutional reform, unless Labour drop the plans, Lord Strathclyde said.

"I don't think we want to look too closely at the shambles the government programme could end up in, because it can all be so easily avoided," he told the Independent.

Despite being seen as defenders of birthright privileges, the senior Tory said his own party and the Liberal Democrats, who together form a majority in the Lords, believe the government has proved it cannot be trusted to carry out further reform.

The 92 remaining hereditaries were left in place under a deal put together between ministers and his predecessor as a temporary solution while agreement was reached on a long term structure for the chamber.

And the Tories believe that they should stay until ministers have put such plans in place.

"You can't believe these people," Lord Strathclyde said. "They talk about a stage two, they break their promises on that, they break their undertakings to parliament at the dispatch box.

"Now they think they can get away with saying there will be a stage three in due course. It is too much for people to accept at face value and I certainly don't.

"Apart from the political issue that this Bill removes 20 per cent of all non-government peers, including 50 Conservatives, and incidentally, the leader of the House of Lords for the opposition. this is not the full and fundamental reform the government has promised.

"Democracy is complicated when it comes to this chamber but a number of proposals are on the table and the government seem to be running shy of what it boasted about, the radical reforming zeal."