The honours system is entrenching elitism in British society by rewarding political work

Why do so many recipients of the Queen's awards come from the postcode SW1?

Lynton Crosby is expected to be knighted in the New Year (Getty Images)

The reporter sent to interview him clearly wasn’t entirely sure why my father had been awarded an MBE. “This man has been given an honour for drinking,” her video report claimed, when the New Year Honours list was published in 2009 and one Michael Hardman, a founder of the Campaign for Real Ale, was on it. We howled with laughter at the accompanying footage of him supping a pint, and teased him when, at his investiture, he was awarded his gong for “services to the brewing industry” alongside curry magnate Enam Ali.

But that ceremony at Windsor Castle was one of the proudest days of our lives. There were so many people there who clearly felt the same: families clapped and glowed with quiet delight at the sight of their fathers, mothers and siblings being congratulated by the Queen. My father had helped to save small breweries and traditional beer from extinction in the 1970s. Others recognised at his ceremony had achieved great things in sport and business. Some, like Sara Payne, who collected an MBE for “services to child protection” had gone beyond the call of duty at the most tragic possible prompting: in Payne’s case, the murder of her daughter Sarah.

The honours list published today contains that similar spread of achievement, from campaigners to sports people to business chiefs. All over the country, families will be glowing with quiet pride again.

But others reading through the names will wonder whether all of these gongs are really, truly deserved. A report by the Public Administration Select Committee in 2012 called for reform of the honours system to prevent people being honoured “for simply ‘doing the day job’, no matter what that job is”. It argued honours shouldn’t just be doled out to celebrities and civil servants, but for “exceptional service above and beyond the call of duty”. Yet this year’s honours list doesn’t seem to make that distinction.

There are still civil servants on it – who may well have worked extremely hard, but whose “exceptional” achievements are unclear. Robert Devereux is the Permanent Secretary at the Department for Work and Pensions and receives a KCB for, according to his citation, “first-rate operational performance in job centres and benefit payment”. He arguably deserves the gong purely for putting up with constant hostile briefing and sniping from Tory ministers about the delivery of universal credit, but Devereux is being rewarded, in essence, for making sure his department did its job. Perhaps Lin Homer also merits her damehood, purely because, as chief executive of HM Revenue and Customs, she’s had to endure the wrath of the Public Accounts Committee, including its fearsome former chair Dame Margaret Hodge, in its inquiries on tax avoidance. Perhaps it’s unfair to single out these two recipients of high awards when their jobs are indeed very tough – but are they examples of the extraordinary, or just a job well done?

It’s not just civil servants, either. David Cameron certainly seems fond of honouring or elevating to the peerage those working around him. The Dissolution Honours, after this year’s election, were littered with former advisers. In many cases it wasn’t clear whether this was because these advisers had done something worth national merit or whether they were simply valued colleagues of the sort found in every workplace.

Others honoured this time around seem to be receiving not only a pat on the back for turning up at work but something of a consolation prize, too. Ed Davey will become Sir Ed Davey for his work as Energy Secretary – but also, presumably, for losing his seat in May.

The honours system will always be subjective: you cannot compare Sara Payne with Lin Homer or Chris Froome with Robert Devereux. And one man’s worthy recipient is another man’s beneficiary of cronyism: to some, winning a surprise Tory majority means the party’s election chief Lynton Crosby is worthy of his knighthood. Others think he was hired to win an election, won that election and picked up his salary for doing so, and therefore doesn’t need any additional prize for fulfilling his job description.

But the problem with valuing public sector work and political work so highly is it entrenches a bad sort of elitism in the system: analysis by The Times this week found nearly half the recipients of high honours (knighthood and above) were privately educated. That will be in part because Westminster and Whitehall are still disproportionately stuffed with people from privileged backgrounds.

The Cabinet Office insists that 76 per cent of awards announced today will go to people “who have undertaken outstanding work in or for their local community”. But that still means an impressive proportion of those receiving gongs this year will be working in only one postcode: is it really the case that SW1 contains such a high concentration of people who go “beyond the call of duty” in their service? Or is it just that they are simply more visible to those drawing up the lists?

When I interviewed those honoured in 2009 for a local newspaper, some public servants couldn’t pinpoint what it was that they’d done that put them above others in their departments and quangos. Their short citations offered little help.

Perhaps a small but sensible reform of the system might be to demand that citations must, in every case, spell out the precise reason someone is deemed to have offered “exceptional service above and beyond the call of duty”, rather than the vague “for services to this sector”.

It would have helped the confused reporter understand my father’s exceptional service to the brewing industry. It would also help those who are scratching their heads about political operators so easily getting their moment before Her Majesty.

And, in some cases, it might help the Cabinet Office to understand that, if you cannot explain in only a few sentences why someone is being honoured, then perhaps they don’t deserve that gong – however useful they are to have around the office.