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PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Honours Nominations - 22 June 2023 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

Debate Detail

Contributions from Kerry McCarthy, are highlighted with a yellow border.
Con
John Penrose
Weston-super-Mare
2. What criteria his Department uses to assess people who are nominated for honours.
Lab
Kerry McCarthy
Bristol East
7. What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of his Department’s processes for scrutinising nominations for honours.
  09:41:46
Alex Burghart
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office
Nominations are, as my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) will know, taken on merit. The criteria that we use are regularly reported to Government, with our most recent report on the operation of the honours system published last month. We are confident that the process for honours selection, including adequate probity and propriety checks, is proportionate and robust and that all due process is followed.
  09:42:38
John Penrose
Does the Minister agree that as proven by recent controversies, the system must be transparently meritocratic, so that it is crystal clear that everybody receiving an honour legitimately deserves it? Now that we have introduced a points-based immigration system to choose the best and the brightest from around the world to live here in Britain, should we consider a similar points-based system to choose this country’s brightest and best to receive honours in future, too?
Alex Burghart
My hon. Friend is too modest to mention that he came up with this idea some time ago, and it is one that we have considered, but it is not one that we will be taking forward at this moment in time. We go to great lengths to ensure that the process remains transparent, and he can read the most recent report, which was published last month. It is essential that we ensure that the committees that make the considerations around the honours system can do so and can report to this place and to the public. While I am aware that he would like us to go further, we do not believe it necessary to uproot the entire system. We want to ensure that the honours system represents people from the length and breadth of the country.
  09:43:54
Kerry McCarthy
The Prime Minister insists that he was only following convention when he waved through Boris Johnson’s honours list. It should be obvious to anyone that this former dishonourable Member—a man who will not even be allowed back on to the estate without an escort—should not be doling out honours. Would a stronger, more principled Prime Minister not have recognised that any convention that allows such a man to install his discredited cronies as peers might need changing, rather than blindly following?
Alex Burghart
The hon. Lady knows that there is a long-standing convention from 1895 that outgoing Prime Ministers have a resignation honours list. To put it in plain language for her, just because that gentleman has been found against in this House, it does not mean that the people who were put forward in his resignation honours list are without merit.

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