The ruling and opposition parties said Wednesday they will prohibit Diet members from employing their spouses as publicly paid secretaries.

The agreement, reached during a meeting of Diet affairs chiefs from each party, followed a proposal made last week by Tsutomu Takebe, a Liberal Democratic Party member who chairs the Lower House speaker's panel deliberating the issue.

All spouses of Diet members currently employed as public secretaries would have to resign after the law takes effect.

Diet members will still be able to employ their offspring, however, because the LDP firmly opposed such a ban. Many LDP members employ their offspring as aides while training them to take over their constituencies after they retire.

A bill will be drawn up and presented to the current Diet session. It will take effect immediately after it clears the Diet.

Under the proposed legislation, lawmakers will also be prohibited from employing people aged 65 or older, and secretaries will have their salaries paid directly into their personal bank accounts, instead of filtered through lawmakers' offices.

The age restriction will not affect secretaries currently working for lawmakers, but they will have to quit if the lawmakers are re-elected.

Beginning Jan. 1, secretaries, in principle, will be prohibited from concurrently holding other jobs, according to the proposal

All parties but the Japanese Communist Party agreed to forbid the act of soliciting publicly paid secretaries to donate their wages to lawmakers' fund-management bodies or political parties.

The JCP forces the secretaries of its Diet members to "donate" part of their wages to the party to help it carry out policy research and other activities.

The proposed measures are intended to prevent Diet members from misappropriating the salaries of publicly paid secretaries, following a scandal involving former DPJ lawmaker Kanju Sato.