Lords reform committee divided over key issues The joint committee report on Lords reform proposes a 450-strong chamber elected every 15 years. Photograph: Leon Neal/PA The scale of dissent over plans to introduce an elected second chamber has been laid bare after nearly half the joint committee on Lords reform issued an alternative report claiming the government had failed to consider how to protect the primacy of the Commons. The main report by the joint committee of peers and MPs published on Monday broadly welcomes the coalition's proposals, but calls for a post-legislative referendum and says "a concordat" will have to be agreed between the two elected houses on their respective powers. It warns of "a constitutional disaster" if a detailed statute sets out the relative powers, as this would open the whole relationship to judicial review. There is a widespread view that an elected second chamber will gradually accrete extra powers, disturbing the delicate relationship that exists between the two houses, largely built on conventions and tradition. David Cameron said earlier he was personally opposed to staging a referendum on Lords reform, but did not rule out holding one. The deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, said calls for a referendum were a monumental distraction, although a poll published by the BBC showed strong support for a plebiscite. Cameron is under pressure from his own backbenchers to drop the reforms. They consider them to be either dangerous constitutional meddling or a distraction from issues of greater concern to voters, such as the economy. The issue threatens to dominate the Queen's speech and take up much of parliament's time over the next year. Conservative opponents of reform will be able to make common cause with Labour to insert a call for a referendum in the bill, something the Liberal Democrats oppose. The main joint committee report proposes a 450-strong chamber elected every 15 years. Of these, 80% would be elected by a form of proportional representation, with 20% appointed by an independent body. It recommends that upper house peers - for which no name has yet been suggested - do no constituency case work, but focus on revising legislation. The number of bishops would fall from 26 to 12. The committee said 150 new peers should join in 2015, another 150 in 2020 and the final 150 in 2025 - all general election years - by the end of which all the existing life and hereditary peers would be replaced. All peers who attend fewer than one in three sitting days in parliament should be immediately removed in 2015. The chairman, the Labour peer Lord Richard, said the committee had been unable to make any costings for the second chamber, largely due to the government's refusal to publish any estimates. But he added: "You are not going to get a second chamber for free." He claimed the chances were better than they had ever been for reform, but admitted that if parliament backed a referendum, it might not be possible to stage one in time for the government to meet its timetable of holding the first Lords elections at the 2015 general election. Richard himself backed a referendum, saying it was more necessary than the one conducted for the alternative vote last year. It is not a question of tinkering with an electoral system. It is a pretty fundamental change. The joint committee divided 15 times on major issues, often in very close votes. The Lords are not allowed to publish minority reports so dissidents on Richard's committee published a full alternative report calling for a constitutional convention to be convened to discuss reform. The state-funded convention would include specialist parliamentarians, church groups "and representatives of wider society." The alternative report was prepared by senior peers, including Lady Symons, Lady Shepherd, the cross-bencher Lord Hennessy and Lord Rooker, as well as MPs such as Tom Clark. It claims, on the basis of an estimate prepared by Lord Lipsey, that the cost of an elected second chamber will be £177m in the first year and £433m over the lifetime of the next parliament. But in her central argument Symons said there was "an unbridgeable gap between an elected second chamber and maintaining the primacy of the Commons." The alternative report claims the government proposals for the election of a second chamber in its draft bill do not set out any proposals to limit its powers. It argues that the current primacy of the Commons rests solely on the fact that the second chamber is not elected and is therefore less legitimate. It cites evidence from two senior lawyers, Lord Goldsmith and Lord Pannick, that the Parliament Act 1911 would probably no longer apply in the event of the Lords being partly or wholly elected. The attorney general, Dominic Grieve, declined to give evidence to the joint committee on this or any other point. Hennessy said: "Lords reform is a grade-one-listed constitutional question and it is also perpetually perplexing." He predicted "the two chambers would end up duelling with one another, flaunting their rival democratic legitimacies and producing legislative paralysis." Hennessy described Lords reform as the Bermuda triangle of British politics from which no politician emerges unscathed.