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Coming soon: Peter Mandelson's question time for MPs

• Nicholas Watt, chief political correspondent
• guardian.co.uk, Thursday 15 October 2009 23.40 BST
• Article history

Peter Mandelson about to take his seat in the House of Lords. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

Lord Mandelson is set to make history by becoming the first cabinet minister from the House of Lords in modern times to answer questions in the Commons.

John Bercow, the Commons Speaker, is planning to use his mandate as a moderniser to break centuries of tradition which have kept the Commons and Lords apart in an attempt to make ministers who sit in the upper house accountable to MPs.

As a first step, Bercow is aiming to change the rules to allow Mandelson, the business secretary, and Lord Adonis, the transport secretary, to answer questions in the mini-Commons chamber attached to the medieval Westminster Hall. This is currently used by MPs for adjournment debates in the morning.

The Speaker is hoping that the parliamentary authorities, which are wary of bringing Commons and Lords closer together, will allow the two ministers to appear at the bar of the house if the Westminster Hall sessions work.

The bar of the Commons is a white strip across the floor of the house that marks the start of the section where MPs sit and where members stand during busy debates when there is no free seating. It is also an area where MPs and members of the public can be sent for censure if they have broken parliamentary rules.

Mandelson and Adonis would appear at the bar when their departmental ministers in the Commons face the monthly business and transport questions from MPs. Bercow would eventually like to see the two peers sit alongside their ministerial colleagues on the Commons government frontbench to answer questions.

Bercow, who signalled his support for the change during his campaign for the Commons speakership in the summer, is strongly supported by Adonis and Mandelson. Adonis wrote to him to say: "I noted what you said about the possibility of secretaries of state in the Lords being subject to oral questions in the Commons. May I say that, should you and the house wish to establish a process for this to happen, I would be very willing to oblige."

Mandelson is enthusiastic about returning to the Commons, which he left in 2004 when he resigned as MP for Hartlepool to become Britain's European commissioner. "Peter is very much in favour of democratic accountability and reducing the distance between the two houses of parliament," a source at the business department said. "He is full of enthusiasm for this if others decide to go ahead with changes."

One source close to the negotiations with the parliamentary authorities said Bercow has a short window to act after being elected Speaker in June on a reforming ticket. "There will be real disappointment if we cannot, as a first step, change the rules by Christmas to allow Lords Mandelson and Adonis to answer questions from MPs in Westminster Hall. But there are a lot of people spluttering and saying this has never been done before. We only need two sessions to take place in Westminster Hall and the old guard will think this has happened for 200 years."

Reformers have called for Mandelson and Adonis to face questions in the Commons after Gordon Brown broke with recent convention to appoint two secretaries of state from the Lords.

The Oxford constitutional expert Professor Vernon Bogdanor last night described the plans to allow Mandelson and Adonis to appear at the bar of the Commons as a radical step.

"It is a radical innovation but it does make a lot of sense. Many MPs are worried that they cannot question two leading cabinet ministers in theHouse of Commons which is, after all, the elected chamber."

The veteran former Labour MP Tony Benn rejected the proposal. He said: "I am not in favour of giving peers who are not elected the sort of authority of being in the Commons."