Select Committee on Public Administration Written Evidence


Memorandum by Michael J Marshall (HON 5)

  If the major issue is to distance ourselves from the word "Empire", I would suggest that you could put in its place the word "Excellence" and thereby keep the headline of the Awards undisturbed. This, in my view, would cause minimum disruption and would keep intact a system that has served the UK extraordinarily well. It would highlight the very thing for which the Honours is being awarded, ie excellence of one sort or another, and the OBE would, for example, become "The Order of British Excellence".

  I also feel that much of the value of the Honours system is that it is conferred by Her Majesty The Queen at Buckingham Palace, and I would suggest that if 2% of the recipients on current lists turn down the offer of Honours, that percentage will increase considerably if the Honours are conferred by Parliament rather than by The Queen.

December 2003





 
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