Ministers face Lords clash over asylum

Ministers were today set for a full-scale confrontation with peers on Monday over controversial government plans to set up a supreme court and to curb the rights of asylum seekers.

Members of the House of Lords will go on the attack in an escalating row between the judiciary and some of the Cabinet's most senior figures, including Home Secretary David Blunkett and Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer. The showdown in the Lords follows a ferocious assault by the Lord Chief Justice Lord Woolf who claimed the move to replace the upper chamber as the highest court in the land would create a "second class" institution which was the "poor relation" of others around the world.

He also stepped up his condemnationof ministers' plans to bar the courts from reviewing asylum cases, saying the move would be a "blot on the reputation of the Government" which could trigger a campaign for a written constitution.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman said: "Lord Woolf is entitled to make his views known. Equally the government is entitled to take the action it believes right to modernise our constitution and

Mr Blunkett, meanwhile was said to be so infuriated by Lord Woolf 's attack on his asylum policy that he was refusing requests for interviews on the subject in case he "lost it".

Tory Lords leader Lord Strathclyde told Radio 4: " Ministers should reconsider what they are doing on the British constitution. We take the view that the rule of law should be supreme - - for governments and for everybody else."