The Social Security minister Baroness Hollis of Heigham announced the policy during debate on the Social Security Contributions (Transfer of Functions) Bill. Pensioners, widows and incapacity benefit claimants were underpaid when a computer system designed to calculating national insurance contributions crashed last summer.The Contributions Agency had outraged pensioners' groups when it said it would compensate only those people owed pounds 100 or more after the breakdown of the National Insurance Recording System.. NEARLY 400,000 benefit claimants and pensioners will be paid compensation of at least pounds 10 each for chaos caused by the breakdown of a Contributions Agency computer, the Government announced. Challenging the Government over its "hidden agenda" behind the reform, Dr Fox added Tony Blair's real aim was to weaken the Lords' power as a second chamber "that he and his cronies could control".An independent commission, chaired by the Tory peer Lord Mackay of Clashfern, the former lord chancellor, will report on alternative proposals for a future second chamber at the beginning of March.. Some hereditaries had "benefited from dubious favours, sometimes sexual, sometimes financial, performed for past monarchs", she said.Pointing to the in-built three-to-one Tory majority in the Lords, Mrs Beckett said the Government had been defeated almost three times more often by peers than had happened on average during the previous Tory government.Andrew Robathan, the Tory MP for Blaby, was cheered by his own benches when he accused Mrs Beckett of "revelling in class warfare".Dr Liam Fox, the party's constitutional spokesman, urged ministers to extend the legislative power of the second chamber by increasing peers' ability to scrutinise secondary legislation such as European directives. But you have made a big mistake if you come back and ask us to reverse our manifesto commitment by endorsing the principle of hereditary peers. "Don't ask us to endorse the principle of hereditary peers, elected by other hereditary peers, and the principle of appointed peers because both of them are an absolute denial of the democratic principle that this House is based on and the upper chamber should be based on."Lamenting prime ministers' unduly large power of patronage, Mr Benn, who, as Viscount Stansgate gave up his peerage in the Sixties to sit in the Commons, said he would like to introduce a Modernisation of the Premiership Bill, which would force all prime ministerial appointments to be approved by the elected Commons.However, Margaret Beckett, the Leader in the Commons, made clear the Government would be prepared to accept the deal if other keynote legislation was not being obstructed by peers.If not, she warned, ministers were prepared to use the Parliament Act under which the Bill in its present form would become law after a year's delay.The amendment to retain 91 hereditaries will be introduced in the Lords by Lord Weatherill, the chairman of the crossbenchers.Opening the two-day debate yesterday, Mrs Beckett said: "Should this Bill be obstructed in the Lords, despite being a clear manifesto pledge, or should it appear that the consensus and good faith for which we hope is lacking, then it is to this simple Bill that we should wish to apply the Parliament Act."She sought to counter backbench concern, pledging that even with such an amendment the automatic rights of hereditary peers would have been removed because those elected by their peers would be there in a personal capacity and their heirs would not inherit their seats.But Nicholas Hawkins, the Tory MP for Surrey Heath, claimed that this amounted to putting a "pistol to the heads" of the Lords, adding: "If that is the case, the word that would be applied to that in the courts would be `blackmail'."Mrs Beckett branded the right of the 750 hereditaries to sit in the second chamber by virtue of birth alone "utterly, totally and literally indefensible". Speaking during the second reading of the House of Lords Bill, he said: "I support this Bill because it abolishes feudalism.

THE GOVERNMENT could face a backbench revolt if it accepts a deal to keep nearly 100 hereditary peers beyond the first stage of its House of Lords reform, Labour MPs warned yesterday. Tony Benn, the MP for Chesterfield, said the proposed compromise would breach the party's manifesto commitment to scrap hereditaries' voting rights. To make Mr Howarth look impressive is something of an achievement, it is true, but not one that is likely to earn Mr Fabricant many Brownie points on his particular astral plane.. Again and again Tory backbenchers rose, misfired loudly and then had to listen as the Labour front bench took the opportunity to reiterate its triumphs.Michael Fabricant, who in a previous life was a Pekinese with an erotic fixation for society ladies' legs, was typical of the ill-prepared attacks - roundly denouncing Labour for breaking an election promise on museum charges and then being obliged to sit and look bashful as Alan Howarth detailed exactly how Labour was going about keeping it. And so, like Mr Ainsworth, he had come prepared.After Ivor Caplin had added an indignant codicil to an innocuous question about the National Stadium, he rose to confess his exasperation at recent events in his manor, events that had led him to reflect on his own past- life misdemeanours: "I can only conclude that I was Vlad the Impaler," he said, "and I felt all of my impaling instincts come back as I surveyed the sporting world this week."Mr Banks, who was actually a music hall comedian in his previous life and has carried through the sense of timing into his current existence, got a genuine laugh for the way in which he had side-stepped the skewer of the question.All this talk of reincarnation naturally led to more general speculation about the karmic prospects - what, for instance, will the Conservative Party return as once it has finally passed on? It can't be long now, because the death rattles are getting ever more strident.Yesterday's question session was a good case in point - a messy exercise in hand-to-hand in which the will to wound was present but the means to do it completely absent. "Britain's extradition request was presented scrupulously through all the requisite diplomatic channels and meets all the necessary requirements... it is not for the Spanish court to dispute the facts in the case."Mr Fungairino conceded that the method whereby Mr Noye was identified before his arrest - by photofit not identity parade - "did not exactly accord with Spanish law", but this formed "no impediment" to granting extradition.

"It is enough for us that a Kent JP has presented an international warrant... Britain presented an absolutely convincing account of the events concerning the stabbing and came to the conclusion that it could have been done by no other person than Kenneth Noye."Mr Cameron, 21, was stabbed to death in front of Danielle Cable, after he and another motorist had an argument on a motorway slip-road at Swanley, Kent. Ms Cable identified Mr Noye in the restaurant.Mr Murillo asked for extradition to be denied, saying the photofit identification - "the only piece of evidence against him" - was "worthless" in Spanish law. The Spanish constitution demanded "the principle of reciprocity" when granting extradition.