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Honours System (Reform)

: There is only one thing worse than deliberate political correctness, and that is deliberate political incorrectness. There is no reason why we should not think freshly and radically about such matters without being accused of political correctness. Indeed, we were given evidence, which we took strongly on board, by John Major, who was a great advocate of what he wanted to call—as we called it in the report—the order of British excellence. He thought that that was exactly the right kind of organic evolutionary change, retaining the letters but adapting the award into a form that everybody would feel comfortable accepting. We built on the suggestion, culled the number of awards down to four, and took account of the considerations of whether there should be separate awards for civil servants, concluding that there should not be. We think we have produced a proposal that takes the honours system out of the hands of politicians into those of an independent commission and is more sensible about defining the criteria for the receipt of honours and not just having them for people of higher rank or for people who are doing their job. We tried to define the basis of the system, removing the name-changing honours and having an honours commission that would report to Parliament on the characteristics of the honours system that have been raised by hon. Members, such as the people who it represents.