BRIGHTON - MPs who successfully blocked plans to create an elected House of Lords should be banned from being given a peerage as punishment, the Liberal Democrats have said.
Treasured Lib Dem plans to scrap the current upper chamber in favour of a 80% elected one were killed off over the summer after David Cameron conceded he could not win a protracted battle against his backbenchers on the issue.
On Saturday Lib Dem activists attending their party conference in Brighton agreed to back a policy motion that supported Nick Clegg's decision to take revenge on the 91 Tories who blocked the Lords Reform Bill by refusing to support plans to re-draw the electoral map - severely damaging Cameron's chances of winning a majority at the next election.
Speaking after the vote, Lord Tyler, the chair of the Lib Dem's political reform committee, said: “We hear frequent complaints that the Liberal Democrats have too much influence in the Coalition.
"However, the blocking of Lords reform – to which all three parties were committed and which had a record number of MPs voted in favour of – reveals a different reality."
The Tory backbencher more frequently mentioned in Brighton by Lib Dem politicians is Peter Bone, who vocally opposed Lord reform and frequently urges the prime minister to cut the Conservatives loose from the Lb Dems.
And it was probably Bone's face at the forefront of Lord Tyler's mind when he added: “What would convert a serious disappointment into an outrageous scandal would be for any of those who voted against the Bill to become Peers.
"Party leaders must give a firm undertaking that none of these MPs will be nominated to the Lords, otherwise it will be rightly suspected that their vote was motivated by personal interest, betraying their manifesto promise to the electorate."
Lib Dem MP Duncan Hames, who is Clegg's ministerial aide, said the Tories got what they deserved after Clegg decided to deny them the boundary review that would have made it easier for them to win an election.
"Tory MPs seemed to think they could break the coalition agreement with impunity," Hames told activists. "It should have come as no surprise to Tory rebels that we would pull the plug on the boundary review. Let's face it, they had it coming."
While Lib Dem whip Alistair Carmichael said he was pleased Clegg had killed the boundary reviews as the Tory MPs "wanted them so much".
"That is why Nick was right to extract the price for the breach of contract that he did. Boundary changes are the obvious price for Conservative backbenchers to pay, not least because they wanted them so much," he said.
Senior Lib Dems stepped up their attacks on Tory backbenchers as the party conference season got underway on Saturday, with Clegg telling his party he would not let "turbo charged" right-wingers damage the country.