A Conservative MP has proposed removing bishops from the House of Lords in response to Government plans to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 as part of its manifesto bid to "cut the cost of politics".
Charles Walker, who is chair of the Commons' Procedure Committee, has set out plans to eject 21 Church of England bishops from what he calls the "bloated" Upper House, which has 805 members.
The plans - which would leave only five senior bishops as 'Lords Spiritual', including the Archbishop of Canterbury - were reported by the Mail on Sunday.
They also include removing the remaining 92 hereditary peers and a new rule requiring all peers to stand down after twenty years.
The Tory Government's plan to axe 50 constituencies is likely to cause infighting among MPs.
Labour, which could lose up to 30 seats as a result of the shake-up, is already set to oppose the plans and Walker refused to rule out voting with Labour if the Theresa May failed to find a compromise by also cutting the Lords.
"I do not believe we can contemplate reducing the number of elected representatives sitting in our Parliament before we have addressed the size of the Lords," Walker said.
He added of the Upper House: "We need to get the number down to 600 or below."
Another Tory MP, Philip Davies, also attacked the plans to reduce the number of MPs, warning: "Most Tory MPs do not support cutting the size of the Commons."
The final Commons vote on the plans will not take place until 2018.
The 2015 Tory manifesto which vowed to "make votes of more equal value". The Mail on Sunday quoted one Tory MP as defending the Government plans, saying: "We have widely different constituency sizes in terms of voters and we need to equalise so that, as near as possible, one person's vote in one part of the country is worth the same as another person's in another seat."
