Mr Clegg said, in the most serious cases, peers should be expelled

Peers convicted of a crime and facing a jail sentence should be expelled from Parliament, Nick Clegg has said.

The Lib Dem leader said there should not be "one rule for lawmakers and another for everyone else".

Calls for tougher rules on peers who do paid consultancy work have followed claims that four Labour peers were ready to take money to help amend laws.

Currently peers cannot be expelled or suspended, only "named and shamed". The four peers involved deny wrongdoing.

In a speech to Unlock Democracy on trust in politics, Mr Clegg says the political system "too often operates on the myth that tradition should somehow always be trusted."

Faith in politics

He says current sanctions are "weak" and, if the peers involved in the most recent allegations were found guilty by a Lords probe, the most they would have to do is apologise.

"This case exposes the extraordinary protection enjoyed by the political class. One rule for lawmakers and another for everyone else," says Mr Clegg.

He called for new laws to allow guilty peers to be expelled.

House of Lords leader Lady Royall has already said tougher sanctions are needed and Tony Wright, chairman of the Commons public administration committee, said faith in the political process would be diminished without reform.

On Monday, two of the Labour peers at the centre of claims they offered to help amend laws for up to £120,000 defended themselves in the Lords.

The four peers named in a Sunday Times story are former energy minister Lord Truscott; former defence minister Lord Moonie; Lord Taylor of Blackburn; and former Labour whip Lord Snape - all of whom deny any wrongdoing.

'Agreed framework'

The prime minister's official spokesman said Lady Royall had spoken about the situation at Tuesday's cabinet meeting, but it had not been a lengthy discussion.

Mr Wright said he believed Lords reform was vital and needed to happen within months, not years.

There had to be an "agreed framework" governing the relationship between lobbyists, peers and MPs.

"Unless the public can see who is lobbying whom about what, this kind of story will influence people's perceptions of lobbyists and politicians across the board and for the worse," Mr Wright said.

It's important we get something in position to say we have serious sanctions to prevent members of the House of Lords from acting improperly Lord Goodhart, Lib Dems

Former Lords leader Lord Richard told BBC Radio 4's World at One programme said reforms should be tackled urgently. He said the House of Lords was asked to do the work of a "major" branch of the legislature, based on customs dating back to the 19th Century.

"It is ludicrous the way in which we are expected to work," he said.

"We're not paid and we don't have offices, there's no room for secretaries, we have none of the normal backup that you would expect a legislator to have.

'Permissible'

"In those circumstances it is very difficult to see how you can drag the House of Lords into the 21st Century."

Newspaper reports say paid consultancy work is carried out by roughly one in five of the 743 members of the House of Lords.

Liberal Democrat Lord Goodhart, a former member of the Committee for Standards in Public Life, told the BBC it was "permissible" to advise on political issues but the allegations were that some peers were "going beyond advice and giving assistance".

He added: "For the future it's important we get something in position to say we have serious sanctions to prevent members of the House of Lords from acting improperly."

On Monday in the Lords, Lord Snape stood up to "refute" the Sunday Times claims, while Lord Taylor of Blackburn apologised but said he felt he had followed the rules.

A recording was later released on the newspaper's website of Lord Taylor saying some firms paid him up to £100,000 a year adding: "That's cheap for what I do for them. And other companies would pay me £25,000."

Two Lords inquiries have begun, one looking at the claims and another looking at sanctions that can be taken against peers.

Nick Clegg says the PM's jobs initiatives have been 'pointless'

School and college leavers aged 16-24 will "bear the brunt" of Gordon Brown's "economic mismanagement", Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg is due to say.

He will accuse the PM of "pointless initiatives" and warn against a "poisonous legacy" of long-term unemployment for the next generation.

Mr Clegg will speak out at one-day Lib Dem conference in London.

Mr Brown has said he is offering "real help"; last week he announced a scheme to create 35,000 more apprenticeships.

But the prime minister's efforts will not create a single new permanent job, Mr Clegg will add.

Today's school leavers could be the first generation in living memory "to end up worse off than their parents", he will claim.

'On the scrapheap'

According to the Lb Dem leader, two million young people who grew up under a Labour government live in poverty and are now being "hit hard by the recession".

He is expected to add: "After having already suffered under Gordon Brown's failure to sort out our education system, this generation now bears the heaviest brunt of his economic mismanagement.

"We have to make sure that this recession does not leave a poisonous legacy for teenagers and young adults. We must not allow a whole generation to end up on the scrapheap of long-term unemployment."

We cannot always prevent people losing their jobs but we can help people finding their next jobs Gordon Brown

He will question the effectiveness of Mr Brown's efforts to boost the economy - including a £140m government scheme to boost apprenticeships, claiming it would not lead to a single new permanent job.

Promising internships to graduates does nothing to address the fear of permanent unemployment, he will say.

And he claims the government is creating new apprenticeships when "thousands of existing apprentices are being thrown off their courses".

In a reference to Mr Brown's plan to help 500,000 people into work or training, announced at a "jobs summit" on Monday, he will add: "He tries to bribe businesses struggling to keep their heads above water with £2,500 to take on the long term unemployed - that won't create a single job."

The Lib Dems say they would scrap that plan and put all additional funding into new apprenticeships.

Helen Suzman: the conscience of white South Africans

Helen Suzman was a relentless critic of South Africa's Nationalist government. For 13 years, as sole member of the Progressive Party in parliament, she was the only MP to speak out against racial segregation, at a time when only the white minority enjoyed the right to vote.

Born in 1917 to Jewish immigrants from Lithuania, she married Dr Moses Suzman, who became one of South Africa's leading physicians.

Five years after graduating from Witwatersrand University, she joined the staff as a lecturer in economic development.

Helen Suzman's interest in disadvantaged urban Africans increased after she became a member of the South African Institute of Race Relations.

She began to take an active role in politics after the 1948 election, when the mildly liberal United party was replaced by the National party, with its rigid policy of apartheid.

Racial discrimination

In 1952, standing for the United party, she was elected to the House of Assembly as the Member for Houghton, a prosperous and largely-Jewish suburb near Johannesburg.

An undaunted fighter for freedom

But in the general election of October 1961, Helen Suzman was the only one of these members to retain her seat.

She was the only candidate, since the first South African parliament was established in 1910, to be elected by a white constituency on a platform that clearly rejected racial discrimination.

Government 'bullies'

As the lone voice of real opposition in parliament, Mrs Suzman spoke out against such measures as the 90-day detention law of 1963, which, she maintained, brought South Africa "further into the morass of a totalitarian state".

At a public rally in Johannesburg in 1966, she condemned the use of arbitrary powers by the justice minister and excoriated the government as "narrow-minded, prejudiced-ridden bullies".

I hate bullies and like simple justice Helen Suzman

Her conception of a multi-racial society did not insist on immediate universal suffrage, but envisaged the right to vote for those who had had seven years of schooling, or four years of schooling and two years of employment.

Although Helen Suzman was re-elected in 1966, the accession of John Vorster as Prime Minister after the assassination of Hendrik Verwoerd appeared to herald little change in the repressive policies of apartheid.

Opposed sanctions

The antipathy between her and another leader, President PW Botha, dated back to Verwoerd's murder in parliament in 1966, when an enraged Botha screamed in Mrs Suzman's face: "You liberals have done this - now we're going to get you!"

Botha was a bitter enemy

But her opposition to sanctions against South Africa lost her friends among radical black people. She believed that isolating South Africa would not solve any of its racial problems, and would harm the black population and neighbouring African states.

International honours

In 1989, Mrs Suzman announced her resignation. One of her last actions as an MP was a motion to impeach a judge who imposed a suspended prison sentence on a white farmer found guilty of beating a black labourer to death.

It had no chance of success, but Helen Suzman eventually won her argument with white MPs that apartheid could not be maintained indefinitely.

Her work was recognised by many honours from many countries. She won the United Nations Human Rights award in 1978 and the Queen made her an honorary Dame in 1989.

When she received a degree from Oxford University, the then Chancellor, Harold Macmillan, described Helen Suzman as an "undaunted champion of freedom".