20 MAY 2004

RT HON JOHN MAJOR CH

  Q900 Sir Sydney Chapman: But the minimum perceptive change could involve two categories. For the British, Order of British Excellence and, for those of the Commonwealth, Order of the British Commonwealth?

  Mr Major: Yes, it could.

  Q901 Sir Sydney Chapman: But could I just press you on whether you think that, in relation to the OBE, three categories are too many? Should there be one simple category?

  Mr Major: No, I do not. I think honours are graduated to reflect graduated commitment and achievement. Where the problem arises is making sure that the level of honour relates to what has been done rather than to the social status of the recipient. There is a bit of a grey area there. You were talking of grand figures in the media, and perhaps I will not name him but I can think of one grand figure in the media who has a very high honour who perhaps would have been mortally offended if he had been given the BEM—which I think he probably deserved—but I think there is a bit of difficulty here and it is always going to be an art rather than a science to determine exactly what the level is. I can think of some occasions where we have got it wrong both ways, where the tariff has been too high and on other occasions where it has been too low, and I think that will always be so. I do not think you can do much about that, except it can be revisited under the present rules I think after five years or so—well, it can be revisited if you have underutilised the tariff, if the tariff is below what it ought to be. There is not much you can do if it is above.

  Q902 Mr Prentice: I am fascinated. In your evidence you are really taking up this idea of having little lapel pins if you have got an honour. What would a Companion of Honour lapel pin look like?

  Mr Major: This Companion of Honour would not wear it, I do not think, but an awful lot of people have made suggestions to me over the years because they know of my interest in the honours system and the reforms I have made. There is a great tendency to concentrate on peers, knighthoods and dames, but there are an awful lot of people who get MBEs, OBEs and CBEs and I have to say to you, although it is easy for those who rub shoulders with the great and good to be a little cynical, the huge amount of pleasure at ground level in your constituencies when a member in a particular organisation gets an honour is pretty substantial, and the point has been put to me on many occasions that there ought to be some way in which people could indicate that—if they wish to. At the moment you only wear your honours at the sort of occasion that 99% of the public never go to, and I think that is a bit of a loss. So I have seen in other countries—I think Australia, Canada—

  Q903 Mr Hopkins: France.

  Mr Major: —France, thank you, where people have that sort of system, so I think it is an option for the Committee to consider which is why I included it in my paper. I think it is an option for consideration. Many would not wish to avail themselves of it but others would, and although we can be cynical about great honours and all that, I think it would be a great mistake to be cynical about the vast majority of honours awarded to people who have done tremendous work in the community or the voluntary service, and we should let them have some way of indicating it.

  Q904 Mr Prentice: I fight against cynicism every day of the year—

  Mr Major: Do you win?

  Q905 Mr Prentice: I think I do—and it does not give me many problems if people have a little lapel pin. I am just intrigued as to what it would look like—but there you go.

  Mr Major: I do not think it would be much different from the sort of thing they have in Australia and France.

  Q906 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Senior civil servants: gongs go with the job. Should that be stopped?

  Mr Major: If you mean "gongs go with the job" as such, most certainly. Automaticity is a bad idea whether it is automatic peerages for former prime ministers or automatic gongs for other people. You have to consider the merit, and by reaching a certain post there is a suggestion that there is a certain merit, so it is not quite as clear cut as saying "You have got a job, you get a gong". Upon that proposition the answer is that, of course, you should not, but if you have a great degree of merit and you do the job particularly well, the fact you have the job should not restrict you from having it. But, as I said earlier, there will need to be a better balance between the awards made to the public service, whether at senior level or lower levels, and the awards made to the voluntary service in particular, and I think that is going to involve a reduction in awards to the public service.

  Q907 Chairman: You were quite radical on this. In fact, you are not putting it as radically as you described it in your paper to us, which was really quite radical. You say that there should be no gongs with rations, which is, of course, what we have had across the public sector in large parts.

  Mr Major: That is exactly what I believe.

  Q908 Chairman: And you want to strip away those categories of honour which state servants dominate because you say it is an anomaly that it should be like this.

  Mr Major: Well, I set out clearly in my paper exactly what I think about that. I think there should be awards to state servants; I am not opposed to that. I am opposed to the disproportionality of the awards to state servants compared to other parts of the population. The historic reasons for that are twofold and they no longer apply—well, one of them, I guess, applies. One was that they were disproportionately poorly paid. Well, nobody would say they are hugely well paid compared to the City but the situation is wholly different now from what it was many years ago, and, secondly, they have a disproportionate amount of awards because they work for the sovereign. Well, that, technically, is still true. There is also the argument that a lot of awards to the public service are a great incentive, but I do not agree with that argument.

  Q909 Chairman: We had an interesting letter from a former Ambassador—in fact his wife—who was describing the lengths that they had gone to to try to avoid being given an honour and how it had proved eventually quite impossible to sustain this. The locals were up in arms because they had not got honours; everybody thought they should have one. Taking your argument through, does it mean that people like ambassadors, who traditionally get these things, should not get them either with the rations?

  Mr Major: Nobody should get anything with the rations but if you become the Ambassador in Paris or Washington or Moscow it is very likely that you thoroughly merit one, so I am not in the business of saying that ambassadors should not get knighthoods per se. There will be occasions when it is absolutely right and fair that they should do so, but that they should do so because they have been appointed to a particular post is not right and should not happen.

  Q910 Kevin Brennan: Finally, earlier on you did refer to the fact that a Prime Minister retiring usually has a pick of honours that they want to take, and in your own case, although you took the Companion of Honour you did not take a knighthood, you did not take a peerage, you seemed almost to be slightly reticent about the idea of wearing the badge that would come with the Companion of Honour. Has it ever been suggested to you, or have you thought, that by taking the stance you have in that way you are slightly letting the side down?

  Mr Major: Well, if ever it was suggested to me I would give the argument pretty short shrift, frankly. Everyone has the option to decide whether or not they will accept something and I have decided in my own particular circumstances I do not wish to, and what I have done is quite consistent. I accepted the CH for the specific reason that it related to work I had done in Northern Ireland of which I was proud, and I was happy to do that. I am not interested in accepting a peerage because a peerage is an appointment to a legislative body. I am not going to go to the House of Lords every day and legislate; I am just not going to do it. I have left politics; I am out of politics; I have moved on, so I am not going to go to the House of Lords. I am not going to become a peer just so that I may have a peerage. That is not of interest to me. I chose not to. As far as the knighthood is concerned, I argued in my paper of 1993 against automaticity, and you have made my case for me because you are implying, because I am a former Prime Minister, I ought to be a peer or a knight. Well, I do not buy or accept that argument. I do not like automaticity and I do not wish to put myself in the position where people would say I was taking advantage of it. So I hope that is clear enough.

  Kevin Brennan: I am glad I asked!

  Q911 Chairman: It is clear enough, and this session has confirmed why we wanted to take evidence from you. This is something that you have reflected on greatly and, indeed, acted upon over the years, and we shall profit greatly from what you have told us this morning. Thank you very much.

  Mr Major: Thank you very much.