Clegg says Tories broke Lords reform agreement

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said today he would abandon the House of Lords reform bill, blaming Conservatives who were unprepared to support changes in sufficient numbers. The reform would have resulted in the election of 80 per cent of peers and cut the number of members in half to 450.

“We do not have the Commons majority needed to ensure this bill passes through parliament,” Mr Clegg told reporters. “The Conservative party is not honouring the commitment to Lords reform and, as a result, part of our contract has now been broken.”

However in a move guaranteed to strain the coalition still further, Mr Clegg said that Lib Dems MPs would now vote against Conservative plans to redraw the parliamentary boundaries.

“Clearly I cannot permit a situation where Conservative rebels can pick and choose the parts of the contract they like, while Liberal Democrat MPs are bound to the entire agreement,” Mr Clegg said. However he told reporters it was up to the Conservatives wether they chose to bring the boundary proposals before parliament or not.

Clegg's all-out assault 
Nick Clegg has just launched an all-out assault on his coalition colleagues, writes Channel 4 News presenter Cathy Newman. The Lib Dem leader has accused the Tories of breaking the agreement the two parties drew up when they entered government by failing to push through reform of the House of Lords.

So he's now pulled the plug on the reform bill - and announced that he'll take revenge on the Tories by voting against the boundary changes - the only hope, many Conservative MPs believe, of delivering David Cameron a majority at the next election.

Despite all the bad blood between the governing parties, Mr Clegg insists the Lib Dems aren't about to walk out of government. But when he talks about the need now to "amend" a "broken" contract, it's tempting to think that what was a marriage of convenience is now a partnership heading for the divorce courts.

Having swallowed the tuition fee increase and the NHS reforms in the interests of coalition unity, Mr Clegg hints he and his colleagues are unlikely to feel any such obligation in the future. So where does this leave the government?

Broken contract

The deputy prime minister insisted the Liberal Democrats would carry on in the coalition however, despite the failure of the Tories to deliver the required votes.

Mr Clegg said a “last ditch” compromise proposed a referendum on Lords reform on general election day in 2015, with boundary changes and the first elections to the Lords deferred until 2020.

“This offer was not accepted,” Mr Cleg said. He added that Britain’s currently unelected second chamber “makes a mockery of our claim to be the mother of all democracies.”

Lib Dem peer Lord Carlile said the reform bill was not thought through properly, however, and that Conservative MPs who opposed the changes had to be respected. Some 91 Conservative MPs rebelled against the government in a vote in July.

Slow death

Opposition from Tory backbenchers and Labour meant the plans faced a “slow death”, Mr Clegg said, and the fracture was diverting attention from other key issues.

All three parties supported reform of the Lords in their 2010 election manifestos, Mr Clegg said.