Appendix B
RESPONSE TO THE Q&A ISSUED BY PASC
THE POSSIBILITY OF RADICAL CHANGE AND OTHER
GENERAL ISSUES
QUESTIONS
1. Does the United Kingdom need an honours
system at all?
The UK would probably benefit from having some
form of national honours for diplomatic reasons, and to reward
special contributions to the community and acts of bravery.
In considering the options the committee should
probably include a consideration of the use of honorary or foreign
grants, which are more extensive than UK/Commonwealth awards in
several important fields. There are broader political issues in
considering the system as a whole, rather than mainly the Lords
and the Order of the British Empire, as the honorary recipients
include foreign heads of state and political and business leaders,
such as President Mbeki of South Africa (GCB) and Bill Gates of
Microsoft (KBE).
The committee's review and conclusions would also
be incomplete without considering the royal honours, which form
part of a whole that cannot be appreciated without understanding
of the role of the Garter, OM and Royal Victorian Order. The royal
orders are funded from the public purse—and for good reason,
as most appointments are connected with state visits.
Do we need as many honours as we have now (3,000
per year)?
A significant reduction in the number of honours
would be welcome.
The large number of honours that we have create
obvious problems, not least because they the process of identifying
and investing candidates takes up such a significant high-level
resource. There is considerable input at the most senior civil
service grades, which would be better deployed in improving public
services.
The honours system falls in the realm of the
tail wagging the dog, as the approach has been that we have say
1000 awards and must allocate them, rather than determine what
special service was performed during the year, and then make an
appropriate number of awards.
The system could be radically overhauled and
limited to rewards for special events. This happens at present
with civil bravery awards and operational lists for military campaigns,
such as Afghanistan and Iraq. Awards for specific events from
the 1980s include those for the Herald of Free Enterprise and
King's Cross railway incidents, and more recently the foot and
mouth outbreak. There would be challenges in devising a system
that identified "special events", but the front pages
of the national press might be as good a guide as any.
The number of honours needed depends on what
the honours system is to be used for. If we want to reward say
1% of everyone working in a certain sector, than the number of
awards needs to be set at X, with corresponding increases as the
coverage goes up. Calculations of this kind are carried out by
the honours committees at present, and so the real policy issue
is what work should be honoured rather than absolute numbers—as
one will tend to flow from the other.
Could we make do with, say, 10 or 100 new honours
each year?
The distinction between quality and quantity
is well understood in informed circles. Anyone with a passing
knowledge would rather receive one of the occasional Garters or
OMs, rather than one of the hundreds of OBEs that have to be allocated
each year.
The country could cope with a small number of
national honours, based on special service connected with important
national events. No one expects fifty George Crosses to be awarded
each year, but if there were fifty incidents involving exemplary
acts of bravery then fifty GCs might be right.
Some honours that involve small numbers command general
respect, such as the Order of Merit and the German Pour le Mérite,
while difficulties arise when the numbers grow and the criteria
becomes general service. At least one 19th century British prime
minister recognised this, and was content to limit the Garter
to senior peers, as he knew that any widening of the pool of candidates
was certain to cause more trouble than it was worth.
2. What should be done about the peerage in
light of, among other developments, the present proposals to remove
all hereditary peers from the House of Lords?
Membership of the House of Lords should no longer
feature in honours lists. The use of peerages as an honour was
always an anomaly, and no one would dream of admitting someone
to the House of Commons on the same basis.
3. In relation to the machinery of the honours
system, what lessons may be learned from the experience of other
countries?
The committee should exercise caution in relation
to the Wilson sources. The evidence about overseas practice is
limited, and does not take account of relevant Commonwealth and
European developments.
The situation in New Zealand, for example, overlooks
the Queen's Service Order (1975), the Order of New Zealand (1987)
and a range of civil and military decorations, while the Canadian
experience does not address the lessons from the provincial orders
that have developed over the last 25 years.
The French narrative leaves out areas that may
be relevant, while the report fails to recognise grades in the
US system (as in the American Legion of Merit), or to acknowledge
important European developments, for example the Swedish revision
of 1974-75, which ended national appointments to the orders (with
the exception of members of the royal family) and dedicated one
honour (the North Star) to overseas service.
If the Swedish and New Zealand approaches were
combined, the reform of the UK system might involve:
— a co-ordinated approach that includes
both state and royal honours;
— the abolition of Garter appointments,
with certain exceptions;
— the abolition of the remaining orders
and the dignity of knight bachelor, and
— the creation of one or two new orders
or medals.
WHAT ARE HONOURS FOR? THE MERIT ISSUE
QUESTIONS
4. If there is to be a future for the honours
system, what should its main function be-to recognize distinction
in particular fields, to reward service, to pay tribute to those
who best represent the nation's values, or something else?
Leaving aside the royal and diplomatic roles
mentioned at Q3 above, the system should be limited to rewarding
special services at home.
This would mean that honours would distributed
as the need arose, as happens now with bravery awards such as
the Queen's Gallantry Medal. The events that constitute "special
service" may be more difficult to define, but recent examples
were mentioned above.
There would then be no routine distribution
of state awards for work in the areas that are currently recognised
such as commerce, the arts, sport, medicine and science. In many
respects the state system mirrors what is already done by other
providers, including professional bodies—such as the Royal
Society and BAFTA—and there seems limited reason to duplicate
all of this effort. The medals, fellowships, certificates, diplomas
and other awards granted by the learned societies and other bodies
would then be left to do the work of the state honours, and if
that was not enough then the granting bodies could be encouraged
to enhance their honours.
5. Can any honours system realistically reflect
all of the above?
Probably.
6. Are the criteria for awards well enough
known and properly understood?
The criteria for awards are neither well known
nor understood.
The bulk of the population has no accurate idea
as to the distinction between a KCB, CMG or LVO, and no notion
of the functions that those honours perform. It may be that were
the facts known and understood then public objections to the system
would be significantly greater than at present. Take the example
of the country's highest order—the Garter—which is
held by four or five dukes, while most people are rewarded with
an MBE which is so much further down the scale. Why did the duke
deserve a KG and not a OBE? The answer is largely based on peerage
rank, which is unlikely to command wide public support in 2004.
7. Is the award of honours bound to be subjective-"an
art rather than a science" as the Wilson Review puts it?
One of the main criticisms is that the grant
of honours to high-ranking individuals appears to be a "science",
while the "art" bit arises elsewhere in the system.
Become a permanent secretary and the KCB will follow, or chief
of the Defence Staff and the GCB will arrive, but work in the
community for 50 years and no matter how valuable or long-lasting
the results who knows what will arrive—it certainly won't
be a KCB or GCB.
This art/science divide is inevitable given
the history of the orders and the formal structures that exist
in the professional bodies, civil service and armed forces, where
grade has traditionally been used to determine who gets what—including
pay and honours.
8. What role should be played in the honours
system by peer groups, professional, business and trade union
bodies and academic institutions? Should they be asked to provide,
monitor and keep up to date the criteria used in recommending
candidates for honours?
Peer groups already play an important, if largely
unseen, role in distributing awards, in at least two ways, and
this could be developed further, as noted at Q4.
Peer groups often select candidates for high
office, whether the lord mayor of London or the president of the
British Academy, and those offices inevitably attract the providers
of honours. One prominent example is the Royal Society, which
selects a president, who always receives the OM, and so the society
plays a direct part in determining who receives that high honour.
Similar considerations apply in many areas.
If the professional bodies believe that honours
have a value—and some obviously do—then they could
be asked to take responsibility and provide the resources to cover
all of the services that they think merit attention. Some bodies
will conclude that they have better things to do, and may be unwilling
to take further responsibility for rewarding good service, because
of the resource implications and the problems of selection which
led to a proposed order being abandoned in the 1880s because Lord
Leighton complained that it would cause too much heartburn in
deciding who should join.
9. Would there be any advantage in applying
to honours selection some of the merit criteria now applied in
appointments to public bodies?
Yes.
10. What would be the advantages and disadvantages
of restricting honours to those who do voluntary work, either
full-time or part-time?
The advantages would include public approval
of the dismantling of the old class and grade based system, and
its replacement by one that rewarded voluntary workers.
The challenge would be in determining what sort
of voluntary work should be honoured. Some people would object
to rewarding religious workers, and the trick would be to achieve
the right balance. I suspect that any restriction to voluntary
work would lead to problems, and there may be practical issues
in defining "voluntary"— there might be no challenge
if a voluntary worker received reimbursed expenses of £10,
but what about a round sum allowance of £5,000?
HONOURS AND SOCIAL DIVISIONS
QUESTIONS
11. The Wilson Review proposes that "in
the interests of equity there should be equal access to honours
for all UK citizens". How could this be best achieved?
The existing system should be reformed, along
the lines suggested in Appendix A.
12. Are the title, and the concept, of an
"Order of the British Empire" now outdated, as the Wilson
Review suggests? If this is the case, what should replace the
old Order-the Order of Britain, the Order of the United Kingdom
or some other name? Should titles such as "Dame" and
"Sir", "Lord", "Lady", "Baron"
etc be abolished?
The name The Order of the British Empire does
not offend me, any more than the Garter or the Bath, but the name
of any new award might be more neutral, such as the Public Service
Order or the Community Service Order, with names such as commander,
officer and members, and insignia and post-nominal letters as
happens now.
It might be better to abandon the use of "order"
and establish medals, such as a Public Service Medal or Community
Service Medal, in say gold, silver and bronze, with bars for additional
service, following existing precedents from the Order of St John
and the Royal Victorian Order.
The prefix Sir and Dame should be abolished
for all purposes, including their use by baronets. The use of
the name knight and dame is used for grades in the Order of St
John, although recipients of the higher degrees are not entitled
to use the prefix Sir and Dame. The committee may also find it
useful to consider the structure and objectives of the Order of
St John.
13. Is it appropriate that Privy Counsellors
should continue to be given the prefix "Right Honourable"?
Appointment to the Privy Council has been regarded
as an honour since at least the 19th century and Queen Victoria
regarded it as a higher distinction than the GCB. The use of the
PC in this way has been explicitly acknowledged since 1918 with
the announcement of certain Council appointments in the bi-annual
lists.
The role of the Privy Council is sufficiently
far removed from the more general function of the orders, that
the time has probably come to stop including PCs in the honours
lists, and to discontinue the titles. The title may be appropriate
depending on the role of the Council, but at present it is probably
a distraction.
14. Some countries have considered creating
single categories of honours, with no divisions into classes or
ranks. Would this be a helpful move, or is it inevitable that,
to reflect different levels of achievement and contribution, various
levels of honour are required?
Few European countries have single categories
across the orders, and the US adopts a tiered approach in some
instances, as with the three class Legion of Merit.
There is no single category honour that comprises
the only award in any EU country. What sometimes happens is that
one order has a single grade, while others have three or more
grades. This happens in Germany, where the Order Pour le Merite
comes in one grade, while the general Order of Merit has more
than five classes.
The recommendations in Appendix A suggest that
there should be different honours—some old, some new—with
different grades and objectives.
15. What changes might be made to the nominations
process to improve the diversity of honours? For instance, should
there be an increase in the proportion of women and minority ethnic
people on the Honours Committees?
The issue of increasing the proportion of women
and minority ethnic people depends on the structure of the honours
system, and what it is for. With a special service medal the distribution
would attach to the service rendered, just as happens with bravery
medals.
If the basic structure of the system is unchanged
then the answer would be to ensure that all of those who deserve
recognition have access to the system. Any change to balance numbers,
for the sake of balancing numbers, would be unlikely to command
public support.
PUBLIC SERVANTS AND HONOURS
QUESTIONS
16. What are the effects, if any, of the honours
system on public administration in the UK? Is it a motivating
or a demotivating force?
It is unlikely that most low to middle ranking
civil servants have any idea about honours, or regard them as
either a motivating or demotivating force.
The response would probably change as one moves
higher up the staff structure, and begins to meet officers who
might hope for an award under existing arrangements. Those close
to a KCB might be motivated by a KCB, while no one really could
say they were ever close to an MBE—which reflects the science
v. art issue mentioned at Q7
The negative impact of honours is a real possibility,
with those in the "science" group not making the best
or right decisions in the public interest, because of concern
over how that might affect their—currently good—prospect
of gaining a KCB. The validity of this argument was accepted when
John Major's 1993 reforms retained the honour of knighthood for
High Court judges.
17. Is it fair that civil servants, diplomats
and those in the armed forces have a much better chance of getting
an honour than other people?
Large parts of the system were designed to reward
civil servants, diplomats and those in the armed forces, and so
the question is perhaps unfair. The system was designed with those
consumers in mind, but we have now realised that it has potential
for other uses.
The present arrangements that provide civil
servants and others with a much better chance of an honour, is
the subject of repeated criticism, which could be remedied by
the introduction of honour for specific events rather than general
good service over a long period. This does not mean that civil
servants and others would be barred from receiving honours, but
they would have to share in the "special event" distribution,
and so if a senior civil servant put in outstanding work that
contributed to the solution of say the foot and mouth epidemic
then he might receive a Public Service Medal, in just the same
way that outstanding work by a hill farmer or rendering plant
operator would, but it would be the same medal for all three and
not a KCB for one and an MBE for the rest.
18. Is it possible to break the apparently
inevitable link between social/employment status and the class
of honour received?
Yes. This would probably be one of the easier
objectives to achieve, provided there was a will to do so.
19. Is there an inevitable conflict of interest
when civil servants are the main judges in assessing whether other
civil servants receive honours?
Probably.
Some of the arbiters in the selection process
have already secured honours, and are probably indifferent to
lower grade honours such as the MBE to CBE that go to more junior
civil servants, but they would take a much keener interest in
preserving what they would see as the integrity of the GCB pool.
20. Should there be an increase in the number
of independent outsiders who sit on the honours committees? Should
the committees be made 100 percent independent, perhaps by banning
all members of such committees from ever receiving an honour?
Much depends on what sort of system is chosen.
The present system may benefit from having independents,
but the challenge is then one of ensuring a good mix and avoiding
the pitfalls that can be caused by special interests groups.
21. Should people who serve the state and
the public well in paid employment be recognised by higher pay
rather than the award of honours?
I would vote for that.
22. Would it be sensible, as the Wilson Review
proposes, to cut down the number of orders of honours so that
state servants have to compete on similar terms with everybody
else?
I would reduce the number of honours and, using
the sort of scheme I have outlined, state servants could gain
places, but only if their service was of the required quality
that applied to all candidates.
GAINING THE PUBLIC'S CONFIDENCE: TRANSPARENCY
AND INVOLVEMENT
QUESTIONS
23. Has respect for the honours system been
diminished by recent disclosures about its operation?
I don't think so, but as someone who had some
idea as to what was happening before "the disclosures"
were not really news and so this may not be a very meaningful
response.
24. In 2000 the Wilson Review paper on Transparency
concluded "the honours system is not a live issue at the
moment. Nor is there much evidence of public dissatisfaction with
the system". Is this judgement still accurate?
Honours are never going to be of great public
concern given the present state of knowledge, as most public contact
with the system amounts to no more than press reports about celebrity
honours—of the David Beckham mould, or someone they know
going to the Palace. A more relevant question might be: would
the public be satisfied with the system if they were in possession
of the facts?
It is also important to remember that comments
are usually limited to the MBE and OBE, as few people know anything
above that level, even although most of the system, in terms of
numbers of honours if not numbers of recipients, involve grants
above the OBE.
25. Is the general public aware of the honours
system and the part they could play in it through nominations?
I suspect that most people have little awareness
of the part they could play, but am not clear whether that is
good or bad.
One of the challenges with the nominations system
is that it creates expectations. The Wilson report refers to 35000
names in the pipeline, and one wonders if that might not sow the
seeds of discontent in years to come.
26. How should awareness of the system be
raised?
Publicity campaigns would be the obvious solution,
but once again it depends on what sort of changes are made. The
process might be structured along the lines of the current system
that identifies recipients of civilian bravery awards.
27. What is your view of the present system
by which roughly half of all honours are nominated directly by
the public, with the rest being generated by departments?
This question dodges a big issue, for although
half of the nominations might come directly from the public there
is no consideration of the quantity v quality or art v science
issues, and in reality not one KG or CH received that honour because
of a public nomination. This defect in the discussion about the
system came across strongly in the evidence that Hayden Phillips
and Gay Chatto gave to the PASC in 2003.
28. Should there be a higher proportion of
public nominations, or should the system be fundamentally changed
so that all honours are awarded as a result of such nominations?
What might be the disadvantages of such an "all-nominations"
system?
An all-nominations system might be difficult
to administer, and be subject to problems with special interest
groups.
29. In the light of the full implementation
in 2005 of the Freedom of Information Act, should there be more
openness about the process by which recommendations for honours
are produced? Should full citations be published?
Many people would welcome an open process, which
might lead to the publication of the statutes of the orders, the
minutes of the main honours committees, Cabinet Office guidance
notes, and so on.
During the first half of the 19th century citations
appeared for many awards, mainly because grants followed action
that was reported in dispatches in The London Gazette. It later
became the practice to limit information to the recipient's name
and office, with no reference to any specific services, although
there were rare exceptions. The decision to publish fuller citations
for some honours started in 1918, but lapsed by the late 1920s
and since then the "name and number" and/or "for
services to . . ." notices were generally adopted. The main
exception involved bravery awards, including the gallantry section
of the Order of the British Empire (which existed between 1957
and the creation of the QGM in 1974), where detailed accounts
of the act often appeared in the Gazette.
The challenge of citations is that it puts honours
under the spotlight, and might lead to more specific criticism
of the services that are alleged to have been rendered. A colleague
might complain that the achievement referred to in the Gazette
was in fact due to other team members, while the "name and
number" approach would be less likely to provoke comments
of that kind.
Fuller citations are used in other countries,
including Canada.
30. Isn't there a danger that more openness
will lead to personal embarrassments or a series of timid recommendations?
The present system may not lead to personal
embarrassment, but it's certainly full of timid recommendations.
Where are the risk-takers? The usual candidates? The deserving
but controversial? The system, taken as a whole, is still very
conservative. If I wrote saying that X should receive the GCB
(and assuming that I knew something about the structure of honours)
that would not be timid, but the recommendation would certainly
go no further, even with good supporting evidence.
Far from the perceived danger, it is possible
that more openness would lead to more robust recommendations than
in the past, as the recommender would know that his or her proposal
would be open to public scrutiny.
OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNANCE
QUESTIONS
31. Is there evidence of political abuse of
the honours system? If there is abuse, what mechanisms might be
put in place to reduce it?
The problems is one of definition. It could
be argued that the current system suffers from political abuse,
in the sense that by maintaining the status quo, the politicians
help to foster a system that gives unwarranted preference to certain
groups, such as dukes and generals. That might not be fair criticism,
given the history of the honours system, but it is criticism none
the less.
32. What role, if any, should Parliament,
the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly for Wales play
in the honours system?
The current orders were created by letters patent
and royal warrants, with regulations issued by the sovereign and
often countersigned by a secretary of state. There is a case for
placing all honours on a statutory footing, with a brief act describing
the honours and their purpose.
The Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly
may not wish to take part in any system adopted by Westminster,
or they may see a role that is completely different from what
happens in England.
There are precedents for geographically based
honours, and it might be possible to reform the whole system by
creating local honours that operate within England, Scotland,
Wales and Northern Ireland (or even at a more local level), perhaps
following the example of the Canadian provincial system.
This might then lead to the devolution of responsibility
for the whole domestic honours system, leaving London to supervise
any residual royal and overseas honours.
33. The United States Congress awards a Medal
of Honor. Could Parliament do something similar?
The US example is an unusual precedent to mention
in the context of the general honours system, as the Congressional
Medal of Honor is the United States' highest award for gallantry,
and we have equivalents in the Victoria Cross and George Cross,
while similar high honours for bravery exist in other jurisdictions,
such as Australia and Canada.
There would be no immediate advantage to changing
the VC and GC procedures, and Parliament would gain little by
creating its own gallantry award to compete with the VC and GC,
which are already held in high esteem.
34. The Wilson Review (in its paper on Oversight,
paragraph 72) suggested a wider independent role for the Honours
Scrutiny Committee in "conducting periodic checks into the
processes by which candidates' names are generated, assessed and
ranked and how closely the lists reflect the distributional pattern
set by the Government of the day". Would such an expansion
of the Committee's role be helpful?
Once again a question of chicken and egg. It
all depends on the changes, if any, to the present system.
In any event—and even with a "special
events" medal of the kind mentioned earlier, there would
be no harm in allowing the HSC to check the processes, and to
determine how closely the lists reflect government policy.
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