London:
Britain's deputy prime minister has said that the government will abandon plans to overhaul the 700-year-old House of Lords amid resistance from both his coalition colleagues and the opposition Labour Party.
Nick Clegg said on Monday that attempts to reform the unelected House of Lords were being scrapped until at least 2015.
Members of Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative Party, the senior member of the coalition government with Mr Clegg's smaller Liberal Democrats, had opposed the plans.
They complained that constitutional changes shouldn't be a priority when Britain is suffering a recession.
Mr Clegg had made reforming the House of Lords a personal crusade.
He acknowledged the decision would put Britain's coalition government under its most acute strain since it was formed in 2010, when Britain's national election saw no single party win a majority.