PENDLE MP Gordon Prentice will continue his fight to persuade Labour to commit themselves to a wholly elected Upper Chamber .

Before leaving for the Labour Party conference in Brighton he said: "I want to see a wholly elected House of Lords, small in number and with powers appropriate to a revising chamber.

"What is on offer at the moment is risible. We live in a secular state but it is proposed to appoint more people to Parliament on the basis of their religion."

Mr Prentice added: "The recent talk about people's peers is a joke. Election is the only basis for a legitimate Parliament.

"The old House of Lords with its hereditary peers was a complete anachronism in the 20th century new mind the 21st. What the government seems hellbent on creating is not much better."