Thread by @RepublicStaff

In his evidence to the Commons committee in 2012 @GrahamSmith_ told MPs:

"We are supposed to be a democratic society, and our sovereignty ought to lie with the people, not the Crown or Parliament. It ought to be the people who are the fount of honour.

It is the people who ought to be rewarding and recognising their fellow citizens, and the monarch ought not to have a place in this process at all...

put in place a process involving an independent committee...the rules of that process ought to be entirely in the hands of a cross-party parliamentary committee.

look at New Year honours list for 2012, and the knighthoods almost entirely for people doing their jobs: mathematicians getting it for doing maths; professors getting it for services to scholarship. The list is full of people getting it for their jobs and for no other reason.

There needs to be a very good reason for anybody getting an honour; I do not think charity work is good enough. This is the whole question of philanthropy. If a very rich person gives large amounts of money to a charity, I do not think that is sufficient to be awarded.

Someone who is on the minimum wage may give a considerably greater contribution to charity, whether it is in terms of their own money or whether it is in terms of time and effort. It is considerably less likely that they would then be knighted for that effort.

It's a matter of how much sacrifice they're making: is it really a huge sacrifice for a multimillionaire to give a few thousand pounds to a charity? Is that a greater sacrifice than a person on minimum wage giving hundreds of pounds, £50, or a considerable amount of their time?

As do many other people, and I think it is notable that it is people occupying certain circles in society who are much more likely to receive knighthoods for charitable work than other people who do so without recognition.

I speak to people about these sorts of issues all the time. It is widely held, not just by republicans, that this system is widely abused.

There was something Digby Jones said that I thought was very strange. He was implying that people would come to him with names of people they would like to give honours to, asking whether he could then find reasons to give them an honour.

He would have to investigate their background and see whether they had done other things beyond being in the City. If you are asking people to go and investigate them after you have already decided you would like to give them an honour, that is a very strange, backward process.

Democratic values are deeply held in this country; that should be reflected in the honours system. It should be citizens rewarding other citizens for great deeds or bravery, not a patronising notion of a higher power conferring status upon a lower subject. That's quite wrong.