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Honours System (Reform)

I am pleased to have this opportunity to comment on our Committee's report. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) on his excellent presentation and on the way in which he chaired the Committee's deliberations. The report is very good, but it is a consensus report and does not necessarily reflect every view of every member of the Committee, so I want to raise one or two points. First, I take issue with the hon. Member for North-East Hertfordshire (Mr. Heald), who speaks for the Conservatives. He asked why we do not just keep everything. There is a serious problem in Britain, in that we have not addressed equality. Some of the revolutionary societies that emerged from the 18th century, such as France and America, thought equality very important. If some of my political forebears, the Levellers, had been victorious within the Cromwellian armies, our society might be much more equal and egalitarian now, but unfortunately we did not win, and some of what existed before the English revolution carried on afterwards and was perhaps reinforced to some extent. The report is absolutely right to suggest getting rid of all the honours, and having a simple, three-tier, single honour. That would parallel the légion d'honneur in France, which is a much more simplified system, and which has a feel of an equal society about it. Our system reflects our still hierarchical and unequal society. It is extraordinary. I have talked to colleagues from the continent of Europe whose countries have had revolutions, defeats in war, economic problems and all sorts of tribulations that we have not experienced. We have preserved in aspic all the structures of the past that they have got rid of. The current honours system needs, if not to be got rid of entirely, then radical reform, as we suggest in the report. It would be healthy for our society to consider things in a much more egalitarian way. My concerns are about the involvement of politicians in the honours system. My hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Mr. Wills) and other hon. Members rightly mentioned that. I suggested during the Committee's deliberations that we should remove the power of the political realm entirely from the honours system; it should be completely separate, with no involvement whatever by the Prime Minister in particular, and by the political powers in general. One simple way to achieve that would be to abolish the House of Lords. I have always been an abolitionist, although I have reluctantly had to concede that there will not be abolition now. Some years ago, I went along to a so-called policy forum—our party has them, but the Conservatives do not, or perhaps they do; I do not know. The subject was reform of the House of Lords. Instead of us having rigorous debates and democratic votes, the subject was chosen for us. We went along to a meeting, and a chair came from outside—we did not know where he came from; he certainly was not elected. He was imposed. Someone suggested that abolition of the House of Lords should be among the things to discuss, but the chair said absolutely not, and that that was not on the agenda. Someone suggested that we ought to have a daring vote, just to test the water on abolition, but the vote was ruled out of order, and we were told we would have no vote. I was puzzled by that; I wanted one. Anyway, it seemed appropriate not to have a vote, given that we were talking about unelected politicians. Abolition would be one way forward, and it would certainly remove the Prime Minister's power to appoint peers. If any appointments of that kind are to continue, they should be removed entirely from the political sphere. My view is that we ought to have a wholly elected House of Lords—a Senate or upper House, as we might call it. The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) suggested the same thing. I was slightly concerned about another point made by our Chair, my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase. He said that things are much better now than they were. Well, relativism only goes so far. Things may be better than they were, but they are still not as they should be. I should like to see the whole system entirely cleaned up. There may be a bit less corruption, political fiddling and patronage than there was, but that is not good enough. We have got to get rid of the system entirely. I want the concentration of power in our country—the centre of power is in Downing street—to be dissolved and spread more evenly through the political system.