Peers aged 75 or older should be stripped of their right to a £300 daily allowance for attending the House of Lords, the chair of Westminster's sleaze watchdog has said.
Pressure to reform Parliament's Upper House has increased since the resignation of Lord Sewel in the wake of drug and prostitution allegations, as well as reports that some peers are claiming allowances without contributing to debates.
The controversy is expected to be fuelled further by the imminent appointment by David Cameron of a significant number of new Conservative peers, in a move which he has indicated is designed to redress the political balance in the Lords but which will further swell the ranks of the 790-strong assembly.
Senior Labour peer Lord Soley has called for rule changes to allow Lords to be suspended immediately when scandals break.
In a letter to Lord Speaker Baroness D'Souza, the former chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party said Sewel's much-delayed resignation showed the need for a method of "imposing a quick suspension of a member" as well as a general rule against bringing the House into disrepute.
The chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, Lord Bew, said peers aged 75 or over should lose their daily allowance. While his proposals would mean older Lords retaining their titles and their right to travel expenses if they wish to speak in the Chamber, it would end a system under which they can "clock in" to claim the allowance without having to show they have carried out any parliamentary work.
Following reports that 20 "silent peers" had been paid a total of £1.6 million in the last five years while taking little part in debates, Lord Bew told the Sunday Telegraph: "If it is true that people are not contributing and just taking their money and behaving in a totally non-instrumental fashion, then this should solve the problem.
"The public would have a cheaper House of Lords but also preserve what is of value to the public.
"This is the moment for reform. If the House just sits there and does nothing and just allows itself to swell... then it will become more expensive and the case for the House of Lords actually deteriorates."
Lord Bew, who stressed that the proposal was his alone and not a recommendation from the Standards Committee, said there was "no question" that the Sewel affair would be seen by the public as "the re-emergence of sleaze in Parliament".
Lord Sewel, who was deputy speaker of the Lords and chaired a committee which oversees peers' conduct, resisted pressure to quit for several days after the publication of film apparently showing him taking cocaine with prostitutes - quitting only after police had raided his London flat as part of a drug investigation.
In his letter, Lord Soley said the affair had highlighted the inability of the Upper House to act when a peer is caught misbehaving.
He told the Speaker: "The damage done to the reputation of the Lords could have been less if we had been able to suspend Lord Sewel as soon as the story broke. That change can and should be made. It is what any other organisation would have done."
Lord Soley added: "We should also bring in a more general rule of 'bringing the House into disrepute'. This has been considered and rejected in the past.
"I think we should now review that decision."