BRITAIN: British peers were last night on a collision course with ministers over the government's plans for a massive constitutional shake-up.
The long-running row was expected to come to a head late last night with the House of Lords voting on a move to send the government's planned reforms to a special select committee for debate.
The government has branded that a delaying tactic which would effectively wreck the Constitutional Reform Bill.
The Bill would scrap the ancient office of Lord Chancellor, set up a Supreme Court as a final court of appeal, and eject the law lords from the upper chamber as well as establish a Judicial Appointments Commission.
The government's plans are opposed by a powerful coalition of law lords, including the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Woolf, and Tory peers.
Last week Lord Woolf, the most senior judge in England and Wales, said proposals for a new Supreme Court to replace the House of Lords as the highest court in the land would create a "second-class" institution which was the "poor relation" of others around the world.
If, at the end of the eight-hour second reading debate, peers did back the move by senior law lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, to send the Bill to a special select committee, the government's parliamentary timetable would be thrown into chaos.
Ministers have threatened to re-introduce the Bill in the Commons and then force the measure through using the Parliament Act - designed to overcome peers' objections to a measure approved by MPs.
But that could mean the row dragging on into next year, with a general election looming.
Speaking in yesterday's debate, the current Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, urged peers not to delay the Bill.
He said the legislation had been discussed in detail for seven months and would be debated in Parliament for many months to come. "In a constitutional change of this importance, proper consideration of the Bill is vital.
"That it should be considered by the elected chamber is, however, the foundation of our parliamentary democracy.
"To prevent the Commons even looking at the Bill is to break with that approach.
"The effect of the amendment of the Lord Lloyd of Berwick is that this Bill will certainly not be passed by Parliament within this session, and it may never be considered by the Commons. We oppose it."
Speaking before the debate, Lord Bledisloe, an independent peer, said he did not want the Bill to face a lengthy delay. But he insisted it needed proper scrutiny.
Details of the abolition of the office of Lord Chancellor "have quite simply not been worked out", the peer told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
The Supreme Court amounted to "a wholly unnecessary waste of a great deal of money merely to achieve technical and token political correctness".
The proposed arrangements were also criticised by the head of the commission which currently oversees the appointment of judges by the Lord Chancellor.
Sir Colin Campbell said he and colleagues "very much support" plans for a new independent appointments commission.
But he told Today: "In doing so the government seems not quite ready to trust the commission.
"It is insisting that the commission should only recommend and that would leave ministerial discretion as a major part of our system, and I would regret that."