Britain's House of Lords suspended two Labour Party peers today for offering to amend laws in exchange for cash, the first time any member of the upper house had been excluded for more than 350 years.
The Lords upheld a ruling from its Privileges Committee that Peter Truscott, a former energy minister, and Thomas Taylor should be suspended until the autumn when the current session of parliament ends.
Two other peers, Peter Snape and former defence minister Lewis Moonie, were cleared of wrongdoing but ordered to apologise publicly to the house for "inappropriate" remarks.
"We are today at a dark moment for our parliament and our democracy. The standing of parliament is diminished, the reputation of parliamentarians is degraded, the trust that people place in parliament and parliamentarians has sunk like a stone," said Janet Royall, Labour's leader in the Lords.
The scandal broke after reporters from the Sunday Timesnewspaper in January posed as lobbyists on behalf of a fake Hong Kong entrepreneur seeking changes to legislation on business taxes.
The newspaper claimed that the peers asked for as much as 120,000 pounds ($167,200) to try to get the law amended.
Lords officials say the last recorded suspension of a peer was Viscount Savile, who was banned by parliamentarians in 1642 for siding with King Charles I at the time of the English civil war.
The House of Lords acts as a revising chamber for laws passed in the House of Commons. Its rules ban any form of advocacy by its members.
The suspensions are further embarrassment for embattled Prime Minister Gordon Brown, already facing criticism over an scandal involving MPs' expenses and lagging the opposition Conservatives in opinion polls.
The current scandal echoes sleaze allegations that contributed to the downfall of John Major's Conservative government in 1997 after suggestions that members took cash to ask questions in parliament.
Members of the House of Lords do not receive a salary for their work in the red-upholstered upper chamber, though they are paid an attendance allowance and expenses.
The House of Lords contains senior members of the Church of England, judges, figures from outside the world of politics and nominees from political parties. There is also a rump group of lords elected internally to stay on after a major reform in 1999 sidelined most of the country's hereditary peers.