For a few years, I was the honours secretary for the newly formed Department of Energy and Climate Change (which became part of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in 2016). I worked with ministers and senior civil servants to use the system as a force for good – to build relationships with people whose help we needed; to reward innovation, vision, selflessness and hard work; to inspire people working to make energy safer and cleaner and those helping to protect the fuel-poor; and to honour achievements, especially of women, people from ethnic minorities and, ideally, those from outside London.
The support I had from the department was immense, and I believe we did a fantastic job to make honours more relevant, more reflective of a modern Britain and, crucially, less of a laughing stock to those who don’t have one or an “entitlement” for those who do.
Gavin Williamson is hardly the first to fail upwards into an undeserved knighthood (Report, 3 March), but it is a disgrace. This should be a source of lasting shame for everyone who approved it.
Jeremy Yapp
Hatfield, Hertfordshire
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