Around 80 members of parliament are set to stand down from parliament at the next election.

More than 50 of those who have already announced they will not contest their seats again are Labour MPs.

Furhter announcements could yet come, adding to the tally of retiring MPs.

The current list includes some big names and former Cabinet ministers including Ann Taylor, Jack Cunningham, Helen Liddell and Estelle Morris.

Cunningham was once Tony Blair's "enforcer", Taylor was a leader of the Commons, and Morris voluntarily quit as education secretary before becoming arts minister.

The Father of the House and the longest continually serving MP, Tam Dalyell, will also bow out this time.

Dalyell, who entered the Commons in 1962, has been described as the most effective and successful campaigner of any MP in the last half of the 20th century.

He is fiercely anti-Iraq war and has proved to be a determined thorn in the side of not just Blair, but past prime ministers of either party.

Big names

Other names of note moving on are Paul Boateng, chief secretary to the Treasury who will depart to become high commissioner of South Africa.

Former culture secretary Chris Smith, who recently revealed that he has HIV, is also stepping down.

Some of the 1997 'Blair Babes' are also among the departing, including Diana Organ, Julia Drown, Jackie Lawrence, Lynda Clark and Jane Griffiths who has been deselected from her seat in Reading East.

Conservatives

On the Conservative side, the next parliament will lose some household names from the Margaret Thatcher era, the most prominent of which is Thatcher's self professed "natural successor" Michael Portillo, who will now step up his journalist career full time.

Portillo had already stepped away from frontbench politics after his unsuccessful bid for the party leadership in 2001.

Sir Teddy Taylor, once described as the elder statesman of Tory europhobes, is also quitting after a long, albeit broken, Commons role which commenced in 1964.

Other ex-Tory Cabinet ministers departing include Virginia Bottomley, who is to pursue a career in head-hunting, Gillian Shephard, who held four Cabinet posts, and Sir Brian Mawhinney who is a former party chairman.

Liberal Democrat Commons spokesman Paul Tyler will step down, and was praised for his contribution to political life during exchanges in the house on Tuesday.