Critics force Blair to dilute scheme for People's Peers

Tony Blair's grand project to create "people's peers" is being quietly diluted after the public relations disaster of the first batch of appointments.

The Government faced anger and bemusement after the initial 15 so-called ordinary citizens elevated to the Lords read more like a list of the great and the good.

A further round of ennoblement is unlikely to take place in the near future, amid signs that ministers are focusing their attention on the second stage of reform of the Upper House.

Although the "people's peers" scheme is not being formally shelved, The Independent has learnt that future appointments are likely to be announced on an individual basis. That would avoid the embarrassment of ministers having to defend the appointment of another roll call of establishment figures.

A Whitehall source said: "The aim is to get away from the concept of a list and to appoint people singly or perhaps in pairs. The process of accepting nominations is going on, but we won't be making any nominations until phase two of Lords reform is on stream."

A spokesman for the House of Lords Appointments Commission, which recommends the non-party political nominations, said the timing and number of future "people's peers" remained with the Prime Minister.

But a Cabinet Office spokeswoman admitted: "It obviously isn't imminent."

Andrew Mackinlay, the Labour MP who recently protested to the Prime Minister in the Commons over the scheme, said last night: "The whole idea was that this should be an annual event and advertised annually. But it was so discredited by humbug and the glitterati being rewarded that I think they are sidelining the whole daft idea."

Advertising for people to apply for the peerages began in September last year, with a November deadline for applications. At the time the commission's chairman, Lord Stevenson of Coddenham, hailed the process as "a historic change in the way that non-party political members of the House of Lords are appointed".

He said he hoped that groups under-represented on the red benches would apply. However in April the 15 "people's peers" selected from 3,166 applications included seven knights and three professors.