BBC News Online: UK Politics

Lords Euro battle to end

The government's hugely-controversial plan to introduce a closed list system of voting in next year's Euro elections will finally go ahead.

The Tories will launch one final show of defiance by seeking to block the move in the House of Lords and are likely to win the day because of their massive inbuilt majority there.

But the government will then invoke the little-used Parliament Act to force the measure through.

Tory peers launched a bitter campaign against the move in the last session of parliament and kicked it out an unprecedented five times.

The new Conservative Lords leader, Lord Strathclyde, promised this opposition would continue.

"This is maintaining our highly principled opposition to this Bill, which we carried out throughout the month of November in the dying days of the last Parliament," he said.

Ministers pledged to bring the bill back in the current session and said they were ready to use the Parliament Act, which is designed to ensure an elected government finally gets its way over unelected peers.

More Tories

The move means the changes will now go through in time for them to be in place for the European poll next June.

Ironically, the new system - which is a form of proportional representation - will ensure the Tories win more seats in the poll than under the existing system.

But Tory leader William Hague insisted he was opposing the plan on a matter of principle because he believed it was fundamentally undemocratic.

He also believes that, by forcing the government to invoke the Parliament Act, he will also make it look undemocratic.

Lord Strathclyde, who took over after Mr Hague sacked former leader Viscount Cranborne for brokering a deal on Lords reform without his consent, admitted this was his party's first real test in the Upper Chamber since.

"It has been an extremely confusing and difficult period over the last couple of weeks or so," he said.

"I think tonight gives us an opportunity to unite behind the leadership of William Hague on an extremely good issue."

But ministers claim it is the Tory peers who have acted undemocratically by persistently refusing to bow to the will of elected members.

Separate battle

And they point out the Act will not have to be invoked because it will be triggered automatically by another Lord's rebellion.

The long-running battle will have strengthened the prime minister's hand in his separate battle with Mr Hague and Tory Lords over the proposal to abolish the voting rights of hereditary peers.

At the end of the day, the Tories will claim they proved they could muster their troops in the Lords and were only forced to bow to the inevitable at the last moment.

Labour will have won the war and will use the skirmish as a weapon in its campaign against the hereditaries.

The last time the Parliament Act was used was in 1991 when the Tory government forced through a bill allowing war crimes trials in Britain.

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