Business leader Moni Mannings has been appointed to a new role to make the honours system more inclusive and reach a wider range of communities.
A new “diversity and outreach committee” has been created by the Cabinet Office, which will have Ms Mannings as its independent chair for a five-year term.
Analysis from the BBC earlier this year showed that only 6% of higher awards went to people in the north of England and only 4% to people from working-class backgrounds.
“The honours system is one of our nation’s most visible mechanisms, not only for celebrating individual contribution but also of promoting our society’s values,” said Ms Mannings.
“Recognising excellence from all walks of life isn’t just a symbolic act – it is how we tell our national story.
“I would be privileged to play a role in ensuring that the honours system reflects and celebrates the full richness of our society.”
Ms Mannings is an independent director for the Co-operative Group and the Land Securities Group, and was a founder of the Empowering People of Colour business network.
She has talked about the challenges as a senior leader in her own business career: “There were very few women, there were certainly no women of colour.
“But even more than that, so few people from working class backgrounds, which actually felt like an even bigger barrier.”
The new committee will encourage a wider range of nominations from regions of the country and parts of society which might currently be under-represented. It will give advice to the other honours committees and the government.
An analysis of the New Year honours list found that more than 60% of beneficiaries of “higher” awards, such as Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) and knighthoods and damehoods, lived in London and south-east England, which accounts for 27% of the UK population.
There had been accusations of unfairness about specific gaps, such as the lack of any knighthoods for rugby league, unlike rugby union and other sports where former stars had been knighted.
This was resolved in this year’s King’s birthday honours in June, when Billy Boston became rugby league’s first knight in 130 years of the sport, after a campaign that had accused the honours system of snobbery against a northern, working class sport.
“It is a historic wrong that a sport, which is the backbone of so many communities, has waited so long to receive this honour,” Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said at the time of Boston’s award.
The new role for Ms Mannings will support Sir Keir’s strategy of making the honours system more representative of the “length and breadth of the UK” and to be “awarded based on merit, regardless of background”.