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Honours System (Reform)

: I am grateful for that reminder. The danger of citing historical instances in which honours have acted as lubricants of the system is that we can offer endless examples to make the point. There is something inherently and necessarily subjective about the award of honours. It is not a science, but an art, and although we should make it as sophisticated an art as we can, it remains inherently subjective. We do not know the motivations of people who do good works; we do not know whether they do them because they are good people or because they would like to get an honour and have worked out that their chances of doing so will be increased by doing good works. In a sense, it does not matter, and it is up to the honours system to make the subjective judgments that make the outcome seem reasonable. It is sometimes said that people should not receive honours just for doing their job and that they should do something more to receive one. That might seem like a decent principle, but it, too, leads to complications. We might all want to honour someone whose job it is to find a cure for cancer even though they are just doing their job. Someone who scores the winning goal for England in the forthcoming World cup might just be doing their job, but they might be thought to deserve an honour.