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

Clegg said that there would be some leeway around the number of voters in a constituency to take into account regional geography.

He committed the government to a referendum on extra powers for the Welsh Assembly, which is a separate 'parliament' sitting in Wales which handles Welsh affairs, and to introduce a plan to force the registration of all voters.

It is thought there are about 3.5 million eligible voters who are not registered to vote.

Clegg also backtracked on a previously announced coalition government plan to make parliaments five years long. He also backtracked on plans to make a 55 percent majority necessary to defeat the government in no confidence votes in the House of Commons.

A plan from the Conservative wing of the coalition to force prime minister's to call a general election within six months if they came to office without first winning an election, as Cameron' s predecessor Gordon Brown had done when he took over from Blair in 2007, was dropped.

Clegg has been charged with constitutional and electoral reform in the new coalition government, and one of the key policies which attracted his party to the coalition was an agreement to hold a referendum on voting reform.

Clegg's Liberal Democrats have always suffered from the British electoral system of first past the post, which rewards all the electoral representation in a constituency to the winner, with no rewards for coming second. It is possible to win a constituency with as little as 28 percent of the vote.

So, many voters find their votes count for nothing. The coalition government agreed to hold a referendum on a system called Alternative Vote (AV), which would allow voters to have a first preference vote and a second preference vote too.

The lowest-polling candidate in an election would be eliminated and those votes would be redistributed to second preferences. This would continue until one of the candidates got a majority of the vote.

MPs had expected to learn when the date of the referendum would be, but Clegg was unable to tell them.