Political pressure is mounting to revive the communications data bill in the wake of the Woolwich attack, with Labour peers Lord West and Lord Reid leading calls for Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats to drop their opposition to the legislation. West said Clegg was putting the country at risk.

Clegg hailed a major political victory when he prevented the draft bill being allowed into the Queen's speech. The home secretary, Theresa May, had hoped she had changed the bill sufficiently from its original format to win the deputy prime minister's support, and even when the bill did not feature in the Queen's speech, she refused to accept that it had been killed off.

Reid, the former Labour home secretary, said such measures were essential to combating terrorism, and warned it could otherwise take "some huge tragedy" to show the decision was wrong.

Lord Carlile, a Liberal Democrat and a former government reviewer of counter-terrorism, reiterated his call for the bill to be revived.

He said on BBC's Newsnight on Wednesday: "We have to learn proportionate lessons from what has occurred. We mustn't rush to judgment. But we must ensure that the police and the security services have for the future the tools they need that will enable them to prevent this kind of attack taking place.

"I hope that this will give the government pause for thought about their abandonment, for example, of the communications data bill, and possibly pause for thought about converting control orders into what are now called TPIMs, with a diluted set of powers."

Lord West, a former first sea lord and security minister under Gordon Brown, said: "The communications data bill is absolutely crucial. We may find the information we need on these mobiles is not there. It was meant to be in the Queen's speech. David Cameron and the home secretary both quite rightly wanted it, but the deputy prime minister said no and that is putting the country at risk.

"They need to look again at the bill, which has a lot of changes to stop it being a snoopers' charter. This ability is something that exists now, and will disappear. I have no doubt that if it goes we will be more at risk, so the deputy prime minister is, I believe, putting the country at risk."

The former Labour home secretary Jack Straw called for the intelligence and security committee to inquire into whether the communications bill was needed in light of the attack.

He said: "We need to know whether it would have made any difference. I don't know. I don't think John Reid knows. You have got to make sure that the proposals are proportionate".

He said the murder was an act of "stone-age savagery".

Asked whether the government may respond to the Woolwich killing by resurrecting the communications data bill, the faith and communities minister, Baroness Warsi, told BBC Radio 4's World at One: "I'm sure people will analyse how things could be done better and I'm sure people will have a lessons-learnt exercise.

"But I think the wrong way to make legislation is on the back of a tragedy like this. It isn't the moment to start looking at the kind of legislation we should or should not have. I'm sure at some point it will play into the debate."

There was no immediate response from the Liberal Democrats, but Clegg's officials had previously said they were willing to look at some residual changes to make sure all mobiles were linked to IP addresses. It was not clear whether this required primary legislation.

Currently, police can identify who has made a telephone call or sent an SMS text message, and when and where. However, they cannot do the same for email, internet telephony, instant messaging or other internet-based services because communications service providers don't retain all of the relevant data.

Notes attached to the Queen's speech hinted that the security services still had ambitions to extend the willingness of the Liberal Democrats to link mobiles to internet providers. The notes said: "When communicating over the internet, people are allocated an IP address. However, these addresses are generally shared between a number of people.

"In order to know who has actually sent an email or made a Skype call, the police need to know who used a certain IP address at a given point in time. Without this, if a suspect used the internet to communicate instead of making a phone call, it may not be possible for the police to identify them."

The government said it was looking at ways of addressing the issue with service providers and that this may involve new legislation.