Chairman Tony Wright asked Mr Yates straight whether he had discovered there was a "trade in peerages".
BBC: NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Key points: Cash-for-honours hearing
Up until 2000, life peerages were handed out as part of the Queen's New Year's and Birthday Honours.
The general rule is that knighthoods go with first names and that peerages (Lords, Barons, Dukes etc) go with surnames.
Mr Yates said the lack of consistency and transparency for nominating working peerages meant it was "very difficult" to find a way through it.
BBC: NEWS | UK | UK Politics | Key points: Cash-for-honours hearing
The inquiry, led by John Yates of the Metropolitan Police, is seeking to establish whether the parties have put forward nominations for peerages in return for financial favours.
ECONOMIST: Embarrassing new details about loans are revealed
But what I am getting at of course is that the US should reintroduce the orders of chivalry, the titles and even peerages of my native land.
Peers recently warned the government that the House was "full", after 117 were appointed in the last year, and new mechanisms were needed to allow members to resign their peerages.
The other big failing of the new Burke's is its decision to include the 500 or so life peerages in its pages while almost entirely failing to give any genealogical information about them.
The Commons meets at 2.30pm on Monday for Home Office questions, after which the Conservative Mary Macleod proposes to follow-up the Succession to the Crown Bill by removing male preference in the inheritance of hereditary peerages and estates.
The prime minister has suffered a nightmare few months, with Labour slipping behind the Tories in the polls and suffering a series of political setbacks, from the cash-for-peerages row through the John Prescott affair, to the string of Home Office crises.
He drew a distinction between "undue influence" - such as donors getting peerages or some sort of business advantage - and "unobjectionable" influence, like donors being able to "put their views on what's best for the country and how it should be run".
BBC: Michael Farmer and Stuart Wheeler on donors & influence
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