A Manchester MP is leading calls for the honours system to be put on ice – and replaced by a focus on ‘unsung’ heroes.

Graham Stringer, Labour MP for Blackley and Broughton, says the current system of giving out gongs and knighthoods is divisive and ‘corrupting’.

He is now calling on MPs to debate putting an end to handing out any more honours until there is a ‘fundamental review’ of the whole process.

It comes after banker Fred Goodwin was stripped of his knighthood by a government committee that said he had brought the 650-year-old honours system into disrepute.

The former RBS chief executive was in charge of the bank when it was saved from collapse with a £45bn taxpayer bailout.

Mr Stringer said: “The mess around the honours system, I think, calls for a fundamental review of the whole process.

“The handing out of titles, particularly knighthoods, to people has become a corrupting process and it’s also divisive in a country that’s already too divided.

“So, I think we need a fundamental look at the system with a refocus on unsung heroes.”

Mr Stringer is planning to table a motion to parliament calling for MPs to support a moratorium on new honours.

He wants a committee to be set up to look at the way the awards process operates.

Last year, Jean Else, the former Whalley Range High School 'super-head', was stripped of the damehood she was given in the 2001 New Year’s Honours List for turning around the school.

The honour was revoked after she was found guilty of misconduct and banned from running a school by the General Teaching Council in 2009.

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