---

Honours System (Reform)

: I have no dispute with that fact. Such people get their awards from the Queen—from the Crown—not from the Prime Minister. I find something else extraordinary. This is not in the report, but it is implicit in this debate that being knighted somehow makes someone a more important person. One just has to read Alan Clark's diaries to realise that it is not a title or a name that makes one a gentleman. I think that the phrase he used to describe someone whom he clearly did not think of as a gentleman, my noble Friend Lord Heseltine, was that he ““bought his own furniture””. I am sorry to say that I never knew Alan Clark, but I am sure he would have thought even worse of people who bought their own peerage. I am not advocating any change to the arrangement of titles. I appreciate the point made by the hon. Member for North Swindon about the distinction between achievement, and service and status. I am proud that Dame Ellen MacArthur received the award that she did as a result of her extraordinary achievement. I do not think that people should receive awards merely for the status that they have achieved. It is sadly implicit in some of the awards given to permanent secretaries that they got them because of the status they achieved, although there is achievement in achieving such exalted status. It is difficult to understand how it would be possible to measure service on a scale—even service that goes the extra mile—in the same way as we can measure achievement on a scale. We can measure achievement; we can see whether something is the best. However, it is very hard to measure the service of someone who has, for example, run out-of-school clubs for 25 years in a rural primary school. That is clearly service, although it is clearly additional service, but how can it be measured on a scale? For that reason, we should appreciate the token nature of the award—I am sure recipients appreciate that—and we should also recognise that not everyone can receive the award. There is no equality; let us get away from the idea that there can ever be any equality in honours. There is no entitlement to honours, there should be no expectation of honours and, certainly, there can be no equality of honours, but there is the chance of recognition at a higher level than the local level. It would, of course, be better if more people contributed locally by putting names forward to those who make the decisions—whoever they should be—about the award of honours.