Blair and Cook clash on voting rights for hereditary peers

Tony Blair and Robin Cook are at loggerheads over whether the Government should abolish the right of the remaining 90 hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords. Mr Cook, the Leader of the Commons, is resisting plans by the Prime Minister to bring in a Bill to axe the hereditaries because he fears that would close the door to more radical reform for many years.

Ministers are considering their next moves after last month's decision of MPs to reject all the options for reforming the second chamber, including proposals for peers to be directly elected.

Blair aides are frustrated by Mr Cook's stance, pointing to the pledge in Labour's 2001 election manifesto to "completing House of Lords reform, including the removal of the remaining hereditary peers, to make it more representative and democratic".

Mr Cook insists there is no personal rift with Mr Blair but is unhappy at being portrayed by Blair aides as a defender of the 90 hereditaries who remained when the others lost their historic right to sit in the Lords during Labour's first term. Friends of Mr Cook stressed he had always been a strong supporter of removing the hereditaries and pointed out that the Commons had voted against an all-appointed Lords, Mr Blair's preferred option.

The Leader of the Commons had hoped MPs would support a mainly elected Lords last month and was unhappy Mr Blair made clear his preference for a wholly-appointed second chamber before the debate.

Although the Government's reform plans were left in disarray by the Commons votes, Mr Cook is reluctant to admit all is lost. He fears that bringing in a minimalist measure would kill any hopes of reviving wide-ranging changes such as elected peers.

Downing Street officials are considering a Bill to remove the hereditaries and hand the Prime Minister's right to appoint peers to an independent commission. Another option is for some members to be "indirectly elected" by the Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and proposed English regional assemblies.

These ideas are also being studied by the joint committee of MPs and peers set up to find options for Lords reform. It meets on 25 March to consider a call by some members to wind itself up after the Commons' decision.

Yesterday Mr Cook said Westminster could learn lessons from Scotland, during a fact-finding visit by MPs to the Edinburgh Parliament. He said MPs had been struck by the way parliamentary business is organised by an all-party bureau; the way committees can scrutinise proposed government regulations before they are approved; and the work of the Scottish Parliament's public petitions committee.

But Mr Cook cast doubt on whether one of Holyrood's features, electronic voting, could be easily transplanted to the Commons. "The Commons still sits in the design of benches they inherited from the chapel Henry VIII gave them at the time the Commons walked out of the Lords," he said.

There were only 400 seats, making it difficult for each MP to have a voting console.