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SCT’s Forum for Debate provides protagonists on either side of an issue or public debate  -  including think tanks, commentators, academics and campaigners – with an opportunity to set out their well-considered, rational arguments and then allow a limited number of exchanges between them. Rather than then hosting an open forum or blog, the debates are designed to encourage visitors, guided by links provided by the British Library, to seek out further information about the issues and engage in face-to-face debate themselves. The  debates could also provide material around which Speakers’ Corner Committees can organise their own local events.

The latest in the series appears below. Previous debates can be found in the archive.


Honouring The Twenty-First Century?

To its supporters, the honours system is an important, traditional feature of the British way of life and a fitting way of acknowledging the achievements of people of all backgrounds. For its critics, it has for centuries provided a disreputable means of inducing, sustaining or rewarding service, first to monarchs and more recently to politicians.

In recent years, efforts have been made both to democratise the system and to protect it from abuse. Anyone can now nominate a fellow citizen for an award and the Cabinet Office describes its primary purpose as being to recognise people who will ”usually have made life better for other people or be outstanding at what they do”. In 2011, in the wake of a series of scandals about the award of peerages in return for donations to political parties, checks were introduced in an attempt to break the link.

But in August 2012, the House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee called for a wholesale review, claiming that the Government’s “lack of willingness to clarify and open up the process” was damaging public confidence.

Does twenty-first century Britain needs an honours system? If so, should we devise a new set of awards which reflects contemporary society rather than our imperial past? Who should receive them and who should decide? Do we need an effective system for withdrawing honours from those who are subsequently disgraced? Or, does the old system remain fit for purpose? Two seasoned campaigners debate the issues.

John Lidstone

After teaching at Repton School, John Lidstone went into industry and in 1964 helped to found one of the most successful marketing consultancy and management training companies in Europe.

John’s expertise as a distinguished commentator on the reform of the honours system is based on years of direct knowledge of those who have received honours as well as his own experience in refusing the CBE which was offered to tempt him to take on the chairmanship of a NHS regional hospital authority.

Following his 1998 Churchill Lecture on the Reform of the Honours System, he was invited to give expert evidence to the two House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee Inquiries in 2004 and 2013.

John is also the author of 16 best selling business books, three of which were made into award -winning films.

Rafe Heydel-Mankoo

Rafe Heydel-Mankoo is an international broadcaster, writer and lecturer specialising in constitutional monarchy and British institutions, traditions and heritage.

One of North America's leading royal commentators, he was a keynote speaker at the Commonwealth Conference on Honours and Awards in 2006, contributing two chapters to the resulting book Honouring Commonwealth Citizens. Rafe also presented evidence to the House of Commons' Public Administration Select Committee in 2004 during its review of the Honours System.

Rafe is a Trustee of the Canadian Royal Heritage Trust and lectures extensively in the UK and North America. He is the co-author and co-editor of Burke’s Peerage & Gentry: World Orders of Knighthood & Merit and has advised various governments on their national honours systems.

Rafe is a Research Associate at ResPublica and contributed a chapter to the think-tank’s 2012 Reform of the House of Lords Report, the conclusion of which he co-authored.

Proposition

The Honours System - More System Than Honour

The honours system has never been an honourable one.

Monarchs have used it to ennoble their offspring, solicit or reward favours and pay off debts and bribes without having to delve into the royal coffers.

Prime Ministers and Opposition leaders have routinely abused their power of patronage to promote or protect their political interests. Perhaps most flagrantly and notoriously David Lloyd George sold honours through his broker Maundy Gregory to the tune of £1.25 million - £125 million at today’s values - with a going rate of £10,000 for a knighthood and £25,000 for a baronetcy. Other party leaders, to the present day, have found that the promise of honours has often proved a powerful incentive to pliability even among once errant backbenchers.

But in recent years the system has been further discredited with the spotlight focused on the trading of honours for donations to all the main parties. Both Margaret Thatcher and John Major were accused of awarding honours to captains of industry in return for donations to the Conservative Party worth several millions of pounds.

Indeed, such was the controversy these practices attracted that when Tony Blair  became Prime Minister in 1997, he famously promised the electorate that New Labour would be ‘purer than pure’ and ‘..uphold the highest standards in public life’. Yet his own administration was soon mired in allegations that honours had been exploited as a means of funding the Labour Party’s election campaigns.

This accumulation of scandals gave rise to the House of Commons’ Public Administration  Select Committee’s inquiry into the reform of the honours system. But the recommendations of its 2004 report A Matter of Honour: Reforming the Honours System were kicked into the long grass by Tony Blair and a subsequent PASC inquiry and report on The Honours System, published in 2012, has fared no better under David Cameron.

I want there to be a properly constituted and transparent honours system based on an unambiguous answer to the question: ‘what are honours for?’ Here is my definition: the honours system exists to recognise through tangible awards acts of outstanding excellence or of bravery beyond an individual’s job or duty.

Such a definition would base consideration of candidates for honours on two simple criteria and no more.

First, honours for performance should only be awarded to those whose achievements over the course of their careers significantly exceeded the requirements of their job.

Second, honours for bravery should only be given to those who in either civilian or military life have shown extraordinary courage beyond the call of duty, such as the Wolverhampton nursery teacher Lisa Potts who in 1996 suffered grievous injuries in protecting the children in her care from a deranged attacker.

This means that the practice of awarding honours that go with a job - whether in the civil service, the military or business - should cease.

There should be a root and branch revision of the present honours with the aim of reducing them to about four. We should also get rid of the class-ridden gradations that divide society. What people achieve and not how they are styled is what should distinguish them. All honours conferring titles should be abolished.

The present system of eight sub-committees headed by a titled man or woman sifting
through the candidates for honours should be scrapped in favour of a Royal Commission made up of people who are not themselves the recipients of honours and are therefore able to take an objective view of candidates.

By all means, let us honour those whose genuine and selfless contribution to the public good merits appreciation and recognition. But do we properly do so through a system which is so clearly debased?

Proposition

A Tradition Fit For A Modern Purpose

The custom of honouring deserving individuals is universal. Historically, almost all cultures and civilisations have developed a means by which exceptional contribution and achievement can be acknowledged – it is part of human nature.

Today, with the exception of Switzerland, every state in the western world has instituted some system for recognising worthy individuals. In recent decades, nations that opted to abolish or reduce the number of their national honours, often motivated by a well-meaning but misguided notion of egalitarianism, have found that this decision has left them unsatisfied as a society and disadvantaged – both  nationally and internationally.

The result, invariably, has been the reinstitution of pre-existing honours or the creation of new ones.  In 2012, for example, Ireland instituted a Presidential Distinguished Service Award for the Irish Abroad which will be conferred for “sustained and distinguished service to Ireland” in one of several sectors of society.

The United Kingdom is fortunate to possess one of the world’s most respected and finely crafted honours systems. The antiquity of some of our honours imbues the entire system with a degree of prestige that is hard to match. The continuity and tradition our honours represent, directly linking the recipients of today with the great heroes of decades and centuries past, are clearly appreciated not only at home but also abroad. Following the overthrow of their authoritarian regimes, many subjugated nations, such as the former communist states of Europe, have been quick to revive their historic national orders.  They appreciate the power that honours possess as symbols of sovereignty and national identity. We are very lucky to have been able to retain our various historic honours – rather than hinder, this heritage enhances our system.

But let us not dwell on the past. Despite its antiquity, the UK honours system is neither antiquated nor backward looking. Over the decades, full-scale reviews and essential reforms, most importantly within the last few years, have ensured that our honours system remains relevant and fit for its 21st century purpose.

The honours system of today is far more independent and transparent than even a decade ago. A quiet revolution has occurred! Each of the various subcommittees tasked with reviewing nominations for honours in specific fields now has a majority of members who are independent from government and the civil service; and each committee is also chaired by an independent member. Public outreach programmes to inform, educate and invite nominations have helped to raise awareness of the honours system; and this has increased the public’s favourable attitude towards honours and their willingness to nominate individuals in their community (approximately 3,500 public nominations are received each year).

According to independent polling commissioned by the government in 2009, 71% of Britons were proud of the UK honours system (up from 66% in 2007) and 3/4 agreed that it was open to all and was conferred for service given to country and community. These beliefs are substantiated by current honours lists. Today, of approximately 3,000 honours conferred annually, the vast majority are bestowed not upon the privileged and the famous but, rather, upon the unsung heroes of Britain who make up the backbone of civil society. They are drawn from all fields, including the health, voluntary and local community sectors.

No longer are honours automatically conferred on individuals purely because they hold a certain office. Ambassadors, for example, can no longer expect to receive a knighthood (viz. our current ambassadors to major states such as China, Germany and Japan).  Knighthoods and damehoods are today conferred upon school head masters, research scientists and academics. Times have changed. In the 2013 New Year’s Honours List, for example, 47% of honours were bestowed on females. And there is now an expectation that those who are honoured should have demonstrated a dedication to society beyond their specific field of endeavour.

Put simply: many of the traditional arguments against the UK honours system are no longer valid.

Response

It is impossible to reconcile Rafe’s contention that in the UK we have “a finely crafted honours system” with the facts. In my view it is susceptible to at least four infections, corruption, self interest, self-promotion and, last but not least, anachronism.

Since 1925 three futile attempts have been made to cleanse a system debased by successive Prime Ministers and their honours brokers.

First, the scandalous way in which it was exploited by David Lloyd George was made illegal under The Honours (Prevention of (Abuses) Act of 1925. Only Maundy Gregory has been convicted under it.

More recently, two Public Administration Select Committees made recommendations for reform, all but two of which were kicked into the long grass by Tony Blair and by David Cameron respectively. Indeed, only last year the Prime Minister was quoted in the national press as telling party supporters, “I have no problem giving honours to donors. They are doing a public service".

The claim that the eight honours sub-committees are made up of independent members is laughable. All are chaired by men and women who have gongs that go with their jobs and the 84 members share 102 between them. 24 senior civil servants sit on the Committees, 14 of whom have collected honours as they have climbed the civil service’s greasy pole. Inevitably they will to one extent or another be biased in favour of people like themselves.

There is also a growing industry which helps people to secure honours for themselves, among them a number who, having employed consultants to publicise their tax-deducted donations to charities, have subsequently reaped the benefits.

I am not opposed to the conferring of awards on those who are genuinely worthy of recognition. But what kind of honour can be derived from such a discredited system?

Response

John is correct to point out some infamous historic scandals. However, it is because of such abuses that we have seen fundamental reform of the honours system. Today it is infinitely more transparent and independent.

Indeed, in their testimonies to the Public Administration Select Committee in 2012, the civil servant heads of the honours system went on record firmly and unequivocally to declare that “automaticity” had ended. It is no longer the case that “gongs go with the job” or that political donations influence committee decisions.

John argues that we should have “about four” honours. We already do. In reality, the only “state” honours are Knights Bachelor and four orders: Bath, St. Michael & St. George, Companions of Honour, and the British Empire. The other five, each of which has a tiny membership, are not “state” honours: they are independent from government as they are within the personal gift of the Sovereign.

John's arguments are similar to those advanced to support the unsuccessful reforms that failed in egalitarian Canada and New Zealand. Knighthoods were abolished in New Zealand in 2000 on the grounds that they were incompatible with modern life. Yet, as in the UK, they remained popular with the public and consequently were reinstituted in 2009. In that year, of the distinguished New Zealanders who were honoured at the highest level post abolition, 85% accepted the Government’s offer to convert their honour to a knighthood!

Canada provides another example of misguided reform. In 1967, that country abandoned all Imperial (British) honours and replaced them with one, single-class honour, the Order of Canada. Almost immediately, in 1972, the government realised that the Order was inadequate and the honours system was expanded. Today, socially progressive Canada has 13 orders all of which, as in the UK, are popular and play an important role in strengthening civil society by honouring diverse achievement.

Conclusion

Although the PASC 2012 Report on the Honours System found that 71% of the general public were “...proud that it existed”, it also concluded that “our evidence suggested that the perception that honours are linked to donations to political parties is prevalent. It is a serious concern that many members of the public do not view the honours as open and fair”.

Politicians still give peerages and knighthoods in return for donations and loans to political parties and national newspapers publish stories about them nearly every week. But the system has also been undermined in other ways.

For example, the Prime Minister ignored the advice of Sir Bob Kerslake, Head of the Civil Service and chair of the Main Honours Committee, as well as others including me, that those who won gold medals at the 2012 London Olympic Games should not be awarded national honours unless they also had a record of giving a great deal over a sustained period of time to charity. My own view was that a globally recognised gold medal was honour enough.

Nevertheless, the Prime Minister created a separate list for the athletes in the 2013 New Year's Honours List. This was not the first such example of gongs for medallists: eyebrows were raised in recent years when OBEs and MBEs were handed out after England’s rugby world cup triumph in 2003 and Ashes victory in 2005.

What can we do to make our honours system honourable? Certainly we should not want to emulate USA, Canada, France or New Zealand which now scatter a veritable confetti of honours around their countries!

First, we need to tighten up the screening process for candidates. This should result in fewer getting honours but that can only increase their prestige.

Second, for the sake of transparency, the meagre 10 word citation for an honour should be expanded. We can all then nod and say 'yes, well deserved’.

Finally, all titles, including those in the personal gift of the Sovereign, should be phased out. They divide rather unite society. And there should be no exceptions: routine service to the Crown, national politics and the civil or diplomatic services is just that - routine.

Unless the Government belatedly implements in full the recommendations of the 2004 and 2012 PASC Reports, the honours system will continue to attract the contempt it deserves. And those of us, in growing numbers, who have refused honours, will mirror the comment made about them by a former Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, who declared in 1840 that “the voracity of these things surprises me. I wonder people do not feel the distinction of an unadorned name”.

Conclusion

I am amazed that someone can criticise our nine (not eight, if I may correct John) expert committees for having amongst their distinguished membership a number who have already been honoured. That these experts have honours clearly demonstrates that they are outstanding authorities. Do we not want our finest specialists to review nominations for honours in their fields? Do we think so little of them as to believe that, once honoured, a professor or physicist will be unable impartially to judge nominations? I find this argument completely bizarre.

The reforms implemented following the major honours review of Sir Hayden Phillips in 2004 have had a tremendously positive effect on the administration of the system and on the diversity of the recipients.  To suggest that the honours system is corrupt, self-promoting and anachronistic is unjust and would surely be resented by those dedicated, hard-working individuals from all sectors of society, who never sought an honour but who rank receiving one, often directly from The Queen, as one of the proudest moments of their lives. In an era when social media outreach programmes are being used to engage people in the honours system, the accusation of “anachronistic” is better levelled at the out-of-date arguments raised by opponents.

The seven head teachers (a majority of whom are women) who received a damehood or knighthood in the 2013 New Year’s Honours List for consistently transforming poorly achieving schools, often in Britain’s most deprived areas, and for additionally contributing their time to numerous other projects above and beyond the requirements of their positions, puts the lie to any hackneyed accusations of cronyism. The national media may, regrettably, focus on famous names but, in that same list, 72% of honours went to individuals who had performed exceptional work in their communities.

Part of the function of honours is to celebrate and inspire. This intention is perhaps best encapsulated in the motto of the now extinct Polish Order of St. Stanislas, "Praemiando incitat" - “by awarding encourage”. Local media coverage enables these people to become role models and local heroes.

I have already shown that honours no longer automatically ‘go with the job’. Similarly, it is important to note that committees responsible for the allocation of honours to deserving civil servants and other ‘establishment’ figures routinely fail to use up their full allocations on the grounds that further awards cannot be justified due to a lack of sufficiently worthy candidates. Our popular system now operates in a manner similar to those ‘gold standard’ systems in place in Australia, Canada and New Zealand, all of which exist to celebrate excellence, exceptional achievement and exceptional service to the community, nation and humanity. Long may our honours continue to serve as sources of national pride.

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