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Honours System (Reform)

: As my hon. Friend will remember, we took the view that it was probably time to move away from what we call name-changing titles: knights, dames and the rest of them. In case anyone thinks that that is an outrageous suggestion, it almost happened in 1916, when an official committee considered all that and started to ask what a democratic honours system would look like and whether it would include name-changing titles. It would not, but that was not the view that won through.