Corruption, privilege and reward: John Major's plans to reform the Honours List will make little difference to a system the establishment uses to uphold the status quo, says Tony Benn

The Prime Minister's announcement that there are to be some minor reforms in the Honours List will inevitably intensify the demand for its complete replacement by a modern system which recognises the contribution to public service made by so many people in this country. All that has been proposed is that some military decorations can be awarded to people of all ranks (which has always been the case for the Victoria Cross and the George Cross), and that there will not be the same automatic distribution of knighthoods to senior civil servants.

But these have never been the main problem with the Honours List. That is the use of the Crown - in its capacity as the Fount of Honour - by the executive to develop a patronage system that is then used to secure the obedience of almost everyone in Parliament, Whitehall and the business world.

Not only is this patronage utterly corrupting in that it gives these powers to the Prime Minister, ministers and senior civil servants to allocate, but it actually strengthens the hierarchical social structure in which everybody is encouraged to defer to those just above them in the pecking order.

The scale of this superstructure of privilege can be measured by the fact that Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, which deals only with these top-rank dignitaries, runs to nearly 3,000 pages of small type. For the common people in our society, who do not aspire to a handle to their name, there are lower ranks in various orders of chivalry, some of which go back to the middle ages. The most recent of these - the Order of the British Empire - was established only a few years before the British Empire disappeared.

The most important political effect of the honours system is the capacity of prime ministers to make peers. The last 10 occupants of No 10 have put nearly 900 people into Parliament via the Lords, with a seat for life, allowances of pounds 100 a day and a status which commands the attention of government departments and others to whom they write.

Since the entire electorate in Britain is able to elect only 651 members of the House of Commons, the enormity of this power becomes apparent. And anyone who hopes for a peerage has to be very careful not to offend party leaders, through whom alone it can be obtained.

It is not unreasonable to assume that about 10 times as many people hope for peerages as actually receive them. If so, perhaps up to 10,000 people have hovered about in the hope of winning the Prime Minister's approval so that they might be elevated to a seat in the Lords.

Of course, baronetcies - invented by James I in 1611 - were then sold for more than pounds 1,000 each, to raise money to keep troops in Ulster. And Lloyd George as recently as the Twenties shamelessly sold honours to raise money for his own political funds. The Political Honours Scrutiny Committee, set up supposedly to prevent such abuses, has never really succeeded in doing more than making it a little difficult for prime ministers to follow the pattern set by Lloyd George.

In the period between 1945 and 1976, seven prime ministers created 118 baronetcies and 264 knighthoods, many of which were awarded to loyal party members in the House of Commons. This in turn guaranteed the passage of difficult legislation and helped the whips to do their work by giving them weapons that are no doubt now being sharpened to get the Maastricht Bill through.

The second major defect of the system is that the awards are given not on the basis of what the recipient has done, but the social status of the person who is thought to be worthy of an honour. This is why, whatever the Prime Minister said yesterday, a senior permanent secretary will still become a Knight Grand Cross in an order of chivalry after a run-of-the-mill career in Whitehall, whereas a gallant sub-postmistress who has fought off a violent attack and been severely wounded would be recognised by an award at the very bottom end of the scale. It matters little whether it is a British Empire Medal or an MBE.

The fact that all these honours derive, in law and mythology, from the Queen herself may conceal the corruption but it reinforces the class system which is necessary to keep the Crown in place. Although the Crown has no part whatever in any but a few awards - as for example the Knight of the Garter - the monarchy itself rests on a pyramid of titles and awards. It is happy to allow the political establishment to award them, knowing that anybody who receives an honour, however minor, will then feel that they are loyal foot soldiers in the army of the Queen.

I set all these arguments out in a paper that I wrote for the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party in 1964. Predictably, Harold Wilson, with his eye on the patronage that he saw awaiting him at No 10, brushed it aside. What is more, his own reforms were supposed to eliminate political honours, whereas in fact he made great use of them.

The record of inactivity by earlier Labour governments must necessarily inhibit the present Opposition in what it can say about John Major's tiny changes. If they were to argue for the Honours List to be swept away and be replaced with a modern system of recognition, they would leave themselves open to the charge that they were against the monarchy (to which most of them are devoted). It might also leave a Labour leader much weaker if, when he moved into No 10, he could not hand out the honours and awards that would make life easier for him.

The plain fact is that the Crown, the political leadership in all parties and the Civil Service all depend upon the Honours List, for different but interlocking reasons, to maintain their power and privileges, and hence the status quo.

It is time to turn off the tap at the Fount of Honour and move to a system of government by consent, which is what democracy in every other country in the world understands by the term.

Many organisations - including universities that give out honorary degrees, cities with their honorary freemen and trade unions with their honorary members - do so by election and not by patronage. For my part, I am very proud to be an honorary member of the National Union of Mineworkers, membership number 001, which is a far greater honour than a peerage - a point I do not have to prove.

Why does the House of Commons not pass a motion of thanks to all those who have performed a public service during the course of the year, giving a parliamentary medal to each, together with an invitation to celebrate it at a reception in Westminster Hall every summer?

For services rendered

The head of the Civil Service, Sir Robert Armstrong, was made a life peer in 1988; Sir Ewan Fergusson, ambassador to Paris, became a GCMG in 1992, along with Thomas Legg, secretary to the Lord Chancellor's Office, who received a KCB

From a grateful nation

Olympic gold medallist Sally Gunnell was made an MBE last year; Andrew Parker was awarded the George Medal in 1987 for bravery after the Zeebrugge disaster; Dr Pauline Cutting became an OBE in 1987 for her work in Palestinian camps

(Photographs omitted)