国际英语新闻：British deputy prime minister announces reform on House of Lords

LONDON, June 8 (Xinhua) -- Britain's deputy prime minister Nick Clegg said on Tuesday that the work will begin next week on drawing up legislation to reform the unelected House of Lords into an elected second chamber.

A committee from the two governing parties -- Clegg's Liberal Democrats and prime minister David Cameron's Conservatives -- and the main opposition Labor party will start examining the reform next week.

It is expected that the committee will produce a draft bill by the end of the year.

The House of Lords is the second chamber in the British parliament, and has fewer powers than the House of Commons follow a power struggle between the two chambers 100 years ago.

Until Tony Blair became prime minister in 1997 it was a wholly unelected house, with most members being hereditary with some appointed by governments, opposition parties and the Queen.

Blair partially reformed the chamber by removing most of the hereditary peers and introducing more appointed peers.

Clegg told members of the House of Commons (MPs), in his first government speech in the House of Commons, "I will not hide my impatience for reforms that are more than a hundred years overdue. People have been talking about Lords reform for over a century. The time for talk is over."

Clegg also fleshed out plans to redraw the constituency boundaries (the geographical areas which elect MPs) so that all contain about the same number of voters. The aim was to create a fairer system and to make a small reduction in the number of MPs, currently 650.