The House of Lords acted "deplorably" by defeating the Government over George Osborne's plans for tax credit cuts, the peer tasked with leading a review of the Upper Chamber's powers claimed.

Lord Strathclyde has been appointed to examine how MPs can be given the "decisive role" over key financial decisions and secondary legislation following the defeat on Monday.

The Tory former Cabinet minister suggested that the Parliament Acts could be changed to curb the power of peers, but rejected the idea of packing the Lords with extra Conservative members to ensure the Government could get measures passed.

Lord Strathclyde said: "I think the House of Lords behaved wrongly, deplorably, and unnecessarily. We have developed very good ways of the unelected House protesting against what the House of Commons does, but backing down in the end.

"On Monday, gleefully and capriciously, the House of Lords voted it down so as to engineer this semi-crisis."

Lord Strathclyde insisted he was not a "bully" following Labour claims that David Cameron had ordered the review in an attempt to intimidate the Lords into backing down from future confrontations.

He told BBC Radio 4's World at One: "My role is to try and give clarity to the conventions that have existed, to look at the choice because there is no government that I can think of since the Second World War that would have put up with the House of Lords destroying or stopping in its tracks a major piece of legislation to do with financial matters, a matter of weeks before the Autumn Statement and a few days after the House of Commons voted in favour of it."

Asked if that could mean changes to the Parliament Acts, the legislation which imposed restrictions on the Lords, the peer said: "At its most extreme that is one possible solution, to try and amend the Parliament Acts. It is one of the options that are open to the Government and no doubt it will be one of the issues I examine. There are many others."

But he rejected the option of creating hundreds of new Conservative peers to give the governing party a greater chance of success in Lords votes.

"That is not one that I would recommend," he said. "I think that would be the wrong thing to do."

The peer said: "One of the great strengths of the House of Lords is that the Government has no majority, you have to try and win the argument. But you have to do it within a framework that does not continually rub against the authority of the House of Commons.

"On Monday the House of Lords had the power to do this, but they didn't have the authority."

Lord Strathclyde said he would like to complete his review before Christmas and would be talking to Labour and Liberal Democrat peers to get their views.