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Honours System (Reform)

I begin by congratulating the Committee on an admirable, thorough, first-class report. I agree with most of it; it is constructive and it makes some important proposals for reform of the orders and the process by which such awards are made. I strongly associated myself with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Tony Wright) on the need for reform of the House of Lords. The honours system does matter, partly because the recognition embodied in the awards powerfully motivates those who serve—a significant point made by my hon. Friend—as well as their colleagues. The system also represents what we value as a nation. It is an important component of our national identity. The report reflects the widespread feeling that although the honours system still fulfils that purpose, in some important ways it fails adequately to reflect our national identity as many would wish. It is not a matter of individual awards, or even the sprinkling of stardust over each list. Ultimately, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase said, each award is subjective, and no matter how committees consider the honours system, that degree of subjectivity will remain. Rather, the question is about the overall balance of awards. What categories of individual receive awards, and why? One issue goes to the heart of the question; it is fundamental to ensuring that the system properly reflects the values of the nation. It is how far the awards recognise exceptional achievement and exceptional service. If awards are given only in recognition of achievement, they could easily be seen as being little more than the privileged reinforcing their privileges—the great and the good establishing themselves even more firmly in the bastions of power and privilege. I hope that few people would think that such a process reflected something desirable in our national life. Equally, achievement cannot be excluded as a criterion. I share my hon. Friend's view of Sir David King's remarks to the Committee. It is important that awards should shed lustre on the award as well as dignifying the recipients. Exceptional achievements can clearly help do that. However, in this admirable report and more widely, the tendency has been to conflate the honouring of achievement and of service as if they are synonymous. They are not. Those who have achieved much in their lives may also have given great service to the nation, but it is not axiomatic. The report recognises the widespread dislike of honours being given to people for simply doing their job. However, I am not sure that it follows that a higher proportion of the higher honours should be given for service rather than achievement. When examining any honours list, it is hard to avoid the impression that awards for services rather than achievement are focused on the lower ranks of each order; the knights, the companions and the commanders are concentrated in the traditional ranks of the established classes. The report includes the evidence of Sir Hayden Phillips, who said:"““Fifty years ago around 40 per cent. of all awards went to Crown servants . . . it is now under 14 per cent.””" That is 40 per cent. of all awards. It is often instructive to examine carefully the use of language by civil servants and politicians. The use of the word ““all”” drove me to look at the distribution of the higher awards. I read the summer list in 2005, and among the higher honours I counted 147 knighthoods and awards such as commanders and companions for various orders, of which, by my rough and ready analysis, 52 went to Crown servants. In other words, 35 per cent. went to the great and the good. When other categories of the great and the good are added to the equation, the proportion is far higher. That might not be surprising, but that does not make it acceptable. Any honours system must use a sifting process. There are two stages in the process that might easily work against those who have given exceptional service, but have not achieved eminent status. First, there is a sifting by category and occupation. It is right, in my view, that there should be an attempt to reflect all facets of national life in rewarding achievement. Not to do so would artificially elevate certain activities above others. It is also clear that that will be a subjective judgment, which might shift to reflect changes in national priorities. For example, the Government are focused on education being a priority, and that has led to educationalists appearing more prominently in the higher honours. Most people would agree that that change is welcome. There will always be a tendency to reflect the most visible and powerful categories, not necessarily those who give the most selfless service to the nation. Some 200,000 people in this country work in social services. Those important, often thankless, jobs often require extraordinary dedication, but such workers are often punished and humiliated in the media when they make mistakes. They rarely receive public commendation when they get things right, and their jobs are not well paid. Yet how many social workers do we see in the upper echelons of the honours system every year? Does that imbalance reflect our core national values? I do not say that businessmen and permanent secretaries should not qualify for such awards—of course they should—but I wonder whether they should receive them so disproportionately in comparison with the caring professions. I am not trying to elevate the status of the caring professions above that of business or that of the civil service. All can serve, but there should be a greater equivalence of esteem, and it should be reflected in the honours system. The second institutional bias in the system against honouring service instead of achievement might flow from the difficulty of identifying recipients. Achievement and status, by definition, thrust themselves forward for recognition. Exceptional service divorced from status will inevitably be harder to identify, but that does not mean that we should not try harder to do so. Of course, that will be a subjective process. I feel humbled every time I see a teacher of children with special needs at work. Their selfless patience and dedication, often in difficult circumstances, can be extraordinary, yet how many of those teachers do we see represented in the higher echelons of the awards every year? As I said earlier, my personal view is that the system is inherently subjective. If we had a system that genuinely recognised service rather than simply achievement, we would see, every year, among the knights, commanders and companions, not only the businessman but the social worker, and not only the head teacher—to pick up on a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice) just made—but the form teacher who has given selfless service over many years. We would see not only the head of a royal college, but the hospital cleaner. If that seems a strange proposition, it is only because the system rewards status more than effort. We can all think of genuinely selfless people who make extraordinary efforts on the part of others, yet whose status in society apparently renders them ineligible for the higher honours. I am talking not about the lower orders, but the higher honours which inherently reflect the value that we place on them in society.