DESERVING people miss out on an honour from the Queen because they live in the North, a parliamentary inquiry heard yesterday.

The distribution of “gongs” – knighthoods, CBEs, OBEs and MBEs – favours the South, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland over the North-East and Yorkshire, MPs were told.

The unfair spread was blamed on too many honours handed automatically to civil servants, public-sector managers and military officers for “doing their day job”.

The North-East and Yorkshire have far fewer senior public-sector staff than the South, which meant they were under-represented.

Meanwhile, voluntary and charity workers are vetted by Lord Lieutenants in each county before receiving an honour, instead of being handed them “as a right”.

Giving evidence to the Commons public administration committee, the Lord Lieutenant for Cheshire called for urgent reform, warning many people believed it was possible to “buy” honours.

The Northern Echo: Honours David Briggs said: “We should only give out honours to people who give more than simply doing their day job.

“A lot of Government officers receive awards – and they tend to be based in the South of England.”

Bernard Jenkin, the committee’s Conservative chairman, suggested deserving people in the North were being “crowded out” in the honours race.

Hundreds are awarded on two set dates during the year, at New Year and on the Queen’s official birthday, in June.

Official figures reveal that between 2.7 per cent and four per cent of awards are given to people from the North-East on each occasion – yet the region contains 4.28 per cent of the UK’s population.

The disparity is worse in Yorkshire, which boasts 8.37 per cent of the population – yet receives only between 4.6 per cent and 6.5 per cent of “gongs”.

Yet London grabs up to 16.9 per cent of honours on each occasion (12.15 per cent of the population) and the South- East up to 14.6 per cent (13.55 per cent of the population).

A Cabinet Office briefing note, commenting on the period 2006 to 2008, acknowledges people living in the North-East and Yorkshire “received proportionally fewer honours per capita”.

Mr Briggs called for Lord Lieutenants to vet everyone nominated for honours, including in the public sector, saying: “People think it is a closed shop.”

And, pointing to 248 MBEs handed out to military personnel in 2010, he added: “It is 25 times harder to win an award as a civilian.”