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Honours System (Reform)

: Indeed it was. When the Committee took evidence from John Major, it was interesting to see the embarrassment that the insistence on awarding that baronetcy had caused him. There is a lot of murky history behind this issue. I was referring to the Home Affairs Committee's failure to produce an agreed report into party funding in the 1990s. The minority report noted that"““between the election of Mrs. Thatcher in 1979 and the 1993 New Years Honours, 18 life peerages and 82 knighthoods have been given to industrialists connected with 76 companies which have between them over the same period donated £17.4 million to the Conservative Party and its front organisations””." I well remember how we used to campaign on those matters. We used to have the list of Conservative donors on one side of the table and the list of peerages on the other. For the sake of historical accuracy, therefore, we must accept that the issue has been endemic in our political system for a long time and that we have resolutely failed to address it. When we talk about honours, we must clear some considerations away.