No more honours for the party faithful

The Commons Public Administration Committee's report on the dishonourable practices which determine who should be elevated or given a bauble is damning.

The committee wants a completely transparent and independent procedure, to take away the power of prime ministers to create peers, and recommends a new anti-corruption law to stop the powerful from abusing their positions. Hallelujah, I say, as a reformed sinner who once accepted an MBE.

I am forever indebted to the poet Benjamin Zephaniah for shaming me live on Channel 4 News in 2003. We were discussing his decision to refuse an OBE. He asked how I could take an award that glorified the British Empire. We were about to go into Iraq, a new imperial project. I could give him no respectable answer. Accepting the MBE had been a foolish surrender to flattery. I decided to return the medal and felt relieved after it went back to Downing Street with a polite letter. I left the smoke-and-mirrors Establishment.

The committee invited me to tell them what I thought of the whole dubious system as part of the inquiry which led to yesterday's report. At the same session was a courteous English gentleman called John Lidstone. He has painstakingly gathered a dossier to show just how bent the honours and peerages process is - and has been for too many years. I was rocked by his revelations. Remember, we in the colonies were brought up to believe politicians and civil servants of the motherland were incorruptible. And so they should be. Many people who receive medals or a place in the Lords unquestionably deserve the nation's respect. Many others, however, do not, not at all. Tycoons who fill party coffers, or willing henchmen good at gathering bagfuls of votes, somehow end up as OBEs, CBEs or lords. Tax dodgers, shady dealers, authoritarian "community leaders" are all heartily welcomed into the club.

Gordon Brown could make the recommended changes this week. He needs no parliamentary approval. He could prove to us he has unhooked himself from Blairite cronyism. Will he? Can he? I suspect not. Once again, after much brooding he will probably bottle out, in his characteristic way. But if he does, the British public will lose even more faith in the political system.