PENDLE MP Gordon Prentice bitterly attacked the choice of so-called people's peers as a "sick joke."

He said there were no lollipop ladies or bus drivers on the list just the normal members of the "great and good" who got into the House of Lords anyway.

The Labour back bencher said this reinforced the case for a fully elected upper house at Westminster.

He said: "It is just a sick joke to continue to refer to this group as people's peers, they are anything but people's peers.

"Apparently you have a better chance of becoming a people's peer if you were a Knight of the Shire, if you were a dame or professor.

"I mean there are no lollipop ladies on this list. I don't see any bus drivers.

"This is a list of the great and the good and is just a great disappointment. It is a complete farce."

He said it would re-open the debate on the future shape of the House of Lords and boosts the case for a fully-elected second Chamber.

He said: "We have this new structure, the House of Lords Appointments Commission, whose prime task is to sift out about 98 per cent of the population who could never be eligible."

He has put down a Commons Motion calling for a "directly elected House of Lords of no more than 100 members."

And the Motion is astonished that these non-party peers could change their minds and take the party Whip and that failed applicants -- more than 3,000 -- were not given reasons for their rejection.

The Motion says: "In a modern democracy the election of legislators is preferable to appointment."