Select Committee on Public Administration Fourth Report


7  Resignation and Dissolution Honours

Resignation honours

40. In his evidence to us, Lord Stevenson was initially uncertain about the scope the Appointments Commission had over scrutiny of resignation honours lists:

[...]. It is embarrassing for me, because frankly, I think they should. I think it does, actually. I think this will fall under our scrutiny but I am rather embarrassed that I cannot give you complete certainty. I will follow it up afterwards and give you complete certainty.[27]

41. He wrote to the Committee subsequently and told us as that, "My understanding now is that if there is a Prime Minister's resignation list, we will be asked to vet it".[28] In answer to a Parliamentary Question put down by a member of this Committee, Gordon Prentice MP, asking if he would make it his policy to submit his resignation honours list to the Appointments Commission for scrutiny and approval, the Prime Minister said, "The House of Lords Appointments Commission will continue to scrutinise any names put to them as appropriate, in the usual way".[29]

Resignation honours are, of course, relatively rare and "the usual way" is in fact more of a series of isolated examples than the Prime Minister's answer would suggest. The PHSC was involved with both Harold Wilson's and Margaret Thatcher's resignation honours lists with differing effectiveness.42.

43. The Government's internal review of the honours system which this Committee published in November 2003 described the PHSC's role in the 'Lavender List' episode in the following terms:

The biggest public controversy during the Committee's 77-year history was Harold Wilson's resignation list of 1976. This episode demonstrated the Committee's ineffectiveness in the face of a Prime Minister who ignored their comments and objections. All but one of the original names appeared in the published list despite the Committee's representations that they could not approve of at least half of the list. The Committee was even uncertain of its right to insist that its report be submitted to the Queen.[30]

44. There seems to have been confusion as to whether a resignation list could be considered as conferring political honours, and to whether it was legitimately a matter for scrutiny by PHSC or just a reward for personal services. The view taken seems to have been that half the names were not 'political' and therefore outside the Committee's remit. Much of this is a matter of public record, set out in the letter Lady Summerskill, the Labour party nominee on the PHSC, wrote to The Times on 27 May 1977 where she revealed that the Committee had met to scrutinise Wilson's list.

45. In contrast it appears that Mrs Thatcher's resignation honours list was scrutinised by the PHSC with more success. It was alleged at the time that she had proposed, among others, Rupert Murdoch for an honorary knighthood and Jeffery Archer for a peerage, but the PHSC had objected to both names which were duly removed.[31]

46. Since then the PHSC has been merged into the Appointments Commission and the honours committees have been reformed on a basis of greater independent participation. Despite the confusion which seems to mark the extent to which resignation honours lists are "political" and therefore appropriately the subject of scrutiny by the Appointments Commission, it seems to us that the logic of a list in which the Prime Minister is effectively putting forward his own names for honours suggests this should be open to scrutiny in a similar way to any names added by him to the biannual honours lists. The Prime Minister's vague assurances and the Appointment's Commission "understanding" that it will vet any resignation honours list are unnecessarily equivocal. The Appointments Commission is specifically charged with considering names which have not been subject to the normal assessment and selection processes. This body should be clearly and unequivocally responsible for vetting Prime Ministerial resignation honours lists.

Dissolution honours

47. We are concerned that the use of peerages as a means of political patronage can also take subtler forms. Anecdotal evidence suggests that certain Members of Parliament who resign their seats very close to a general election, thus allowing the party leadership greater leeway in selecting a successor candidate, find their way into the House of Lords. Using appointment to the legislature as a means of party management risks undermining the workings and the reputation of the House of Lords which the Appointments Commission is charged to protect. This was a practice over which the Appointments Commission felt they had limited, if any, locus, restricting their scrutiny to matters of propriety rather than suitability with regard to party nominees as working peers. Lord Stevenson told us that:

… as a general proposition, going back - and you are describing someone who I am sure does not exist, some very straightforward, undistinguished, completely honourable MP, but who in your judgement, in this hypothetical state, might not be someone who would contribute a great deal to the House of Lords - having checked that that person passed our propriety tests, that would be it. We do not have a brief to assess people for what I call suitability.[32]

48. However, when pressed about the possibility that a seat in the Commons might be exchanged for one in the Lords, he conceded that:

It is reasonable to conjecture that if we found that, in some sense of the word "sold", someone had sold their seat, it would be reasonable for this Commission to look at that under the propriety test…[33]

49. Wider party responsibility over the choice of candidates should also help to overcome concerns over MPs announcing their retirement from the Commons in the immediate run up to a general election and being subsequently ennobled in the dissolution honours list. The impression of peerages being offered as inducements in kind, rather than conferred in the expectation of future participation in the legislature, is damaging. To the extent that it happens, it should stop.


27   Ev 21 Back

28   Ev 25 Back

29   HC Deb, 8 June 2006, col 827W Back

30   www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/JP%204wilkdoc%20Oversight.doc Back

31   Adam Raphael, "'Honours that carry a whiff of corruption", The Observer, 23 December 1990 Back

32   Ev 16 Back

33   IbidBack


 
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