The House of Lords, upper chamber of Britain's parliament, met yesterday in its ancient chamber to discuss a reform which advocates say would drag it into the 20th century.
It began a two-day debate on government plans to end the centuries-old right of hereditary peers to vote on legislation as part of an overhaul of the constitution.
Presiding, in a long wig, was Lord Chancellor Derry Irvine, chief government law officer.
Peers packed the House, even sitting on the steps to the throne used by Queen Elizabeth when she opens parliament each autumn, as Lady Margaret Jay, the Labour non-hereditary peer who is leader of the House, promised a Bill within months.
"Legislating to stop hereditary peers being Members of Parliament removes a profoundly undemocratic element," she said.
If the reforms go through, membership of the upper House of Parliament will fall from 1,135 - most of whom seldom attend - to around 500. The bulk of those who lose their seats will be on the right wing of British politics.
The domination of the House by Conservatives, which has been frustrating centre-left governments since the Lords rejected plans by prime minister William Gladstone to bring Home Rule to Ireland 105 years ago, will disappear.
Those who remain will be life peers, nominated to the Lords for life by successive prime ministers, as well as senior judges and bishops of the established Church of England.
Lady Margaret said the government plans a committee of inquiry, or Royal Commission, to discuss ways to make the Lords reflect Britain's multicultural society.
Viscount Cranborne, leader of the Conservative peers, whose family has been represented in the Lords since 1604, said he was willing to "go quietly" if reform produced an independently-minded second chamber. But he accused the government of wanting a House of Lords obedient to the will of the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, and of planning never to go beyond elimination of hereditary peers.