MPs end new year’s honours exile
By Peter Wozniak
Politicians have reclaimed appearances on the new year’s honours list for the first time since the expenses scandal broke.
Labour MP Anne Begg is to be made a dame while veteran Conservative Peter Bottomley will be knighted.
Fulltime wheelchair user Ms Begg receives her honour for services to the disabled and her work on equal opportunities since she was elected to the House in the 1997 Labour landslide.
Mr Bottomley meanwhile becomes a knight on the back of 35 years of public service as an MP, having been first elected to his Sussex constituency in 1975.
Today’s list marks a return from a short exile from the list for MPs, who fell heavily out of public favour in the wake of the scandal in 2009.
A number of celebrity figures were also honoured in the list, including singer Annie Lennox receiving an OBE for her charity work in Africa and eminent actor David Suchet becoming a CBE.
Over 100 people were honoured for their involvement in military service. Current chief of defence staff General Sir David Richards is to become a Knight Grand Cross in the Order of the Bath.
In business, outgoing head of the CBI Richard Lambert is joined by Martin Broughton, the chairman of British Airways.
But David Cameron is understood to have stressed that of nearly 1,000 honours awarded, the vast majority have gone to unknown figures for their work in the local community – as part of renewed emphasis on the prime minister’s Big Society narrative.
