Cabinet of the United Kingdom
The Cabinet of the United Kingdom is the senior decision-making body of His Majesty's Government.[1] A committee of the Privy Council, it is chaired by the Prime Minister and its members include Secretaries of State and other senior ministers. Members of the Cabinet are appointed by the Prime Minister and are by convention chosen from members of the two houses of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
For the current Cabinet, see Cabinet of the United Kingdom § Current Cabinet.Cabinet overview
The Ministerial Code says that the business of the Cabinet (and cabinet committees) is mainly questions of major issues of policy, questions of critical importance to the public and questions on which there is an unresolved argument between departments.[2]
The work of the Cabinet is scrutinised by the Official Opposition's Shadow Cabinet.
Composition[edit]
The Prime Minister decides the membership and attendees of the Cabinet.[5]
The total number of Cabinet ministers who are entitled to a salary is capped at 21, plus the Lord Chancellor, who is paid separately.[6] Some ministers may be designated as also attending Cabinet, like the Attorney General,[7] as "...it has been considered more appropriate, in recent times at any rate, that the independence and detachment of his office should not be blurred by his inclusion in a political body – that is to say the Cabinet – which may have to make policy decisions upon the basis of the legal advice the law officers have given."[8]
The Cabinet is a committee of the Privy Council (though this interpretation has been challenged) and, as such, all Cabinet ministers must be privy counsellors.[9]
Members of the Cabinet are by convention chosen from members of the two houses of Parliament, as the Peel convention dictates that ministers may only be recruited from the House of Commons or the House of Lords, although this convention has been broken in the past for short periods.[10] Patrick Gordon Walker is perhaps the most notable exception: he was appointed to the Cabinet despite losing his seat in the 1964 general election, and resigned from Cabinet after running and losing in a by-election in January 1965.[11] Sometimes, when a minister from neither House is appointed, they have been granted a customary peerage.[12] The Cabinet is now made up almost entirely of members of the House of Commons.[7]
Civil servants from the Cabinet Secretariat and special advisers (on the approval of the prime minister) can also attend Cabinet meetings, but neither take part in discussions.[1]
It has been suggested that the modern Cabinet is too large, including by former Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill and scholars Robert Hazell and Rodney Brazier.[13][14] Hazell has suggested merging the offices of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales into one Secretary of State for the Union,[13] in a department into which Rodney Brazier has suggested adding a minister of state for England with responsibility for English local government.[14]