London - The government was last night heading for a constitutional showdown with the House of Lords, after the upper chamber rejected for a third time its plans to lower the gay age of consent to 16.
Government sources made clear that the government was prepared to carry out its threat to use the Parliament Act to get the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Bill on to the statute book.
Voting in the Lords was 205 to 144 - majority 61 - after the Conservative family values campaigner Baroness Young argued that if the Bill was passed unamended, it would put girls of 16 at risk of buggery.