Cabinet of the United Kingdom

Template:Short description Template:For Template:For Template:More citations needed Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox government agency Template:PoliticsUK The Cabinet of the United Kingdom is the senior decision-making body of the Government of the United Kingdom.<ref name=":3">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> A committee of the Privy Council, it is chaired by the Prime Minister and its members include Secretaries of State and senior Ministers of State. 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.

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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The work of the Cabinet is scrutinised by the Shadow Cabinet, made up of members of the Official Opposition.

HistoryEdit

Template:More citations needed section Until at least the 16th century, individual officers of state had separate property, powers and responsibilities granted with their separate offices by royal command, and the Crown and the Privy Council constituted the only co-ordinating authorities. In England, phrases such as "cabinet counsel", meaning advice given in private, in a cabinet in the sense of a small room, to the monarch, occur from the late 16th century, and, given the non-standardised spelling of the day, it is often hard to distinguish whether "council" or "counsel" is meant.<ref name="oedCabinet">OED Cabinet</ref> The OED credits Francis Bacon in his Essays (1605) with the first use of "Cabinet council", where it is described as a foreign habit, of which he disapproves: "For which inconveniences, the doctrine of Italy, and practice of France, in some kings' times, hath introduced cabinet counsels; a remedy worse than the disease".<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Charles I began a formal "Cabinet Council" from his accession in 1625, as his Privy Council, or "private council", and the first recorded use of "cabinet" by itself for such a body comes from 1644, and is again hostile and associates the term with dubious foreign practices.<ref name="oedCabinet"/>

There were ministries in England led by the chief minister, which was a personage leading the English government for the monarch. Despite primary accountability to the monarch, these ministries, having a group of ministers running the country, served as a predecessor of the modern perspective of cabinet. After the ministry of Lord Stanhope and Lord Sunderland collapsed, Sir Robert Walpole rose to power as First Lord of the Treasury. Since the reign of King George I the Cabinet has been the principal executive group of British government. Both he and George II made use of the system, as both were not native English speakers, unfamiliar with British politics, and thus relied heavily on selected groups of advisers. The term "minister" came into being since the royal officers "ministered" to the sovereign. The name and institution have been adopted by most English-speaking countries, and the Council of Ministers or similar bodies of other countries are often informally referred to as cabinets.Template:Citation needed

File:Cabinet Office (29542331802).jpg

Cabinet Office, London

The modern Cabinet system was set up by Prime Minister David Lloyd George during his premiership, 1916–1922, with a Cabinet Office and secretariat, committee structures, unpublished minutes, and a clearer relationship with departmental Cabinet ministers. The formal procedures, practice and proceedings of the Cabinet remain largely unpublished.Template:Citation needed

This development grew out of the exigencies of the First World War, where faster and better co-ordinated decisions across government were seen as a crucial part of the war effort. Decisions on mass conscription, co-ordination worldwide with other governments across international theatres, and armament production tied into a general war strategy that could be developed and overseen from an inner "War Cabinet". The country went through successive crises after the war: the 1926 general strike; the Great Depression of 1929–32; the rise of Bolshevism after 1917 and fascism after 1922; the Spanish Civil War 1936 onwards; the invasion of Abyssinia 1936; the League of Nations Crisis which followed; and the re-armament and resurgence of Germany from 1933, leading into the Second World War.Template:Citation needed

CompositionEdit

The Prime Minister decides the membership and attendees of the Cabinet.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The total number of Cabinet ministers who are entitled to a salary is capped by statute at 21, plus the Lord Chancellor, who is paid separately.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Some ministers may be designated as also attending Cabinet, like the Attorney General,<ref name=":2"/> 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."<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Members of the Cabinet are by convention chosen from members of the two houses of Parliament, as 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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Sometimes, when a minister from neither House is appointed, they have been granted a customary peerage.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The Cabinet is now made up almost entirely of members of the House of Commons.<ref name=":2"/>

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.<ref name=":3"/>

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.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=":1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Hazell has suggested merging the offices of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales into one Secretary of State for the Union,<ref name=":0"/> in a department into which Rodney Brazier has suggested adding a minister of state for England with responsibility for English local government.<ref name=":1"/>

Meetings of the cabinetEdit

File:The Cabinet table.jpg

The Cabinet table

File:Huntley & Palmers Her Majesty's Cabinet.jpg

Her Majesty's Cabinet on a 19th-century trade card

Template:See also Most cabinet meetings take place in the Cabinet Room of 10 Downing Street; however, they have been known to take place in other places.<ref name=":3"/>

Despite the custom of meeting on a Thursday, after the appointment of Gordon Brown, the meeting day was switched to Tuesday.<ref name="Telegraph1">Template:Cite news Template:Cbignore</ref> However, when David Cameron became prime minister, he held his cabinet meetings on Thursdays again. Upon Theresa May's tenure, she switched the cabinet meetings back to Tuesday.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

The length of meetings varies according to the style of the Prime Minister and political conditions, but modern meetings can be as short as 30 minutes.Template:Citation needed Ministers are bound by the constitutional convention of collective ministerial responsibility.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

ImportanceEdit

Template:Further Template:More citations needed section Cabinet ministers, like all ministers, are appointed and may be dismissed by the monarch without notice or reason, on the advice of the prime minister. The allocation and transfer of responsibilities between ministers and departments is also generally at the prime minister's discretion. The Cabinet has always been led by the prime minister, whose originally unpaid office as such was traditionally described as merely {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (first among equals), but today the prime minister is the preeminent head of government, with the effective power to appoint and dismiss Cabinet ministers and to control the Cabinet's agenda. The extent to which the Government is collegial varies with political conditions and individual personalities.Template:Citation needed

The Cabinet is the ultimate decision-making body of the executive within the Westminster system of government in traditional constitutional theory. This interpretation was originally put across in the work of 19th-century constitutionalists such as Walter Bagehot, who described the Cabinet as the "efficient secret" of the British political system in his book The English Constitution. The political and decision-making authority of the cabinet has been gradually reduced over the last several decades, with some claiming its role has been usurped by a "prime ministerial" government. In the modern political era, the prime minister releases information concerning the ministerial ranking in the form of a list detailing the seniority of all Cabinet ministers.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The centralisation of the Cabinet in the early 20th century enhanced the power of the prime minister, who moved from being the primus inter pares of the Asquith Cabinets of 1906 onwards, to the dominating figures of David Lloyd George, Stanley Baldwin, and Winston Churchill.Template:Citation needed

The Institute for Government claims that the reduced number of full Cabinet meetings signifies "that the role of Cabinet as a formal decision-making body has been in decline since the war."<ref name="H&P">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> This view has been contradicted by Vernon Bogdanor, a British constitutional expert, who claims that "the Cabinet has, in fact, been strengthened by the decline in full meetings, as it allows more matters to be transferred to cabinet committees. Thus, business is done more efficiently."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Most prime ministers have had a so-called "kitchen cabinet" consisting of their own trusted advisers who may be Cabinet members but are often non-cabinet trusted personal advisers on their own staff. In recent governments, generally from Margaret Thatcher, and especially in that of Tony Blair, it has been reported that many or even all major decisions have been made before cabinet meetings. This suggestion has been made by former ministers including Clare Short and Chris Smith, in the media, and was made clear in the Butler Review, where Blair's style of "sofa government" was censured.Template:Citation needed

The combined effect of the prime minister's ability to control Cabinet by circumventing effective discussion in Cabinet and the executive's ability to dominate parliamentary proceedings places the British prime minister in a position of great power, that has been likened to an elective dictatorship (a phrase coined by Quintin Hogg, Baron Hailsham of St Marylebone in 1976). The relative inability of Parliament to hold the Government of the day to account is often cited by the UK media as a justification for the vigour with which they question and challenge the Government.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The classic view of Cabinet Government was laid out by Walter Bagehot in The English Constitution (1867) in which he described the prime minister as the primus-inter-pares ("first among equals").<ref name="Fairclough 2002, p. ≈23">Template:Cite book</ref> The view was questioned by Richard Crossman in The Myths of Cabinet Government (1972) and by Tony Benn. They were both members of the Labour governments of the 1960s and thought that the position of the prime minister had acquired more power so that prime ministerial government was a more apt description.<ref name="Fairclough 2002, p. ≈23"/> Crossman stated that the increase in the power of the prime minister resulted from power of centralised political parties, the development of a unified civil service, and the growth of the prime minister's private office and Cabinet secretariat.<ref name="Williams 1998, pp. 113–114">Template:Cite book</ref>

Graham Allen (a government whip during Tony Blair's first government) makes the case in The Last Prime Minister: Being Honest About the UK Presidency (2003) that the office of prime minister has presidential powers,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> as did Michael Foley in The British Presidency (2000).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> However, the power that a prime minister has over his or her cabinet colleagues is directly proportional to the amount of support that they have with their political parties and this is often related to whether the party considers them to be an electoral asset or liability. Also when a party is divided into factions a prime minister may be forced to include other powerful party members in the Cabinet for party political cohesion. The Prime Minister's personal power is also curtailed if their party is in a power-sharing arrangement, or a formal coalition with another party (as happened in the coalition government of 2010 to 2015).<ref name="Williams 1998, pp. 113–114"/><ref name="Fairclough 2002, p. ≈23"/><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Current CabinetEdit

{{#invoke:Labelled list hatnote|labelledList|Main article|Main articles|Main page|Main pages}} The current cabinet is led by the newly appointed Prime Minister Keir Starmer and succeeded the Sunak ministry. This is Starmer's first cabinet following the 2024 General Election.

Template:As of the makeup of the current Cabinet is as follows:<ref name=":2">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Minister		Office(s)	Department	Took office
File:Coat of arms of the United Kingdom (2022, lesser arms).svg Starmer ministry
Cabinet ministers
File:Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer Official Portrait (cropped).jpg	Template:Small Sir Keir Starmer Template:Small	Prime Minister First Lord of the Treasury Minister for the Civil Service Minister for the Union	Cabinet Office	Template:Start date and age
File:Angela Rayner Official Cabinet Portrait, July 2024 (cropped) 2.jpg	Template:Small Angela Rayner Template:Small	Deputy Prime Minister Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government	Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government	Template:Start date and age
File:Rachel Reeves Official Cabinet Portrait, July 2024 (cropped 2) (cropped).jpg	Template:Small Rachel Reeves Template:Small	Chancellor of the Exchequer Second Lord of the Treasury	HM Treasury	Template:Start date and age
File:Pat McFadden Official Cabinet Portrait, July 2024 (cropped) 2.jpg	Template:Small Pat McFadden Template:Small	Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Template:Efn Minister for Intergovernmental Relations	Cabinet Office	Template:Start date and age
File:David Lammy, 2024 (cropped).jpg	Template:Small David Lammy Template:Small	Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs	Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office	Template:Start date and age
File:Yvette Cooper Official Cabinet Portrait, July 2024 (cropped) 2.jpg	Template:Small Yvette Cooper Template:Small	Secretary of State for the Home Department	Home Office	Template:Start date and age
File:John Healey Official Cabinet Portrait, July 2024 (cropped) 2.jpg	Template:Small John Healey Template:Small	Secretary of State for Defence	Ministry of Defence	Template:Start date and age
File:Shabana Mahmood Official Cabinet Portrait, July 2024 (cropped) 2.jpg	Template:Small Shabana Mahmood Template:Small	Lord Chancellor Secretary of State for Justice	Ministry of Justice	Template:Start date and age
File:Wes Streeting Official Cabinet Portrait, July 2024 (cropped) 2.jpg	Template:Small Wes Streeting Template:Small	Secretary of State for Health and Social Care	Department of Health and Social Care	Template:Start date and age
File:Bridget Phillipson Official Cabinet Portrait, July 2024 (cropped) 2.jpg	Template:Small Bridget Phillipson Template:Small	Secretary of State for Education Minister for Women and Equalities	Department for Education	Template:Start date and age
File:Ed Miliband 2024 (cropped) 2.jpg	Template:Small Ed Miliband Template:Small	Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero	Department for Energy Security and Net Zero	Template:Start date and age
File:Liz Kendall Official Cabinet Portrait, July 2024 (cropped) 2.jpg	Template:Small Liz Kendall Template:Small	Secretary of State for Work and Pensions	Department for Work and Pensions	Template:Start date and age
File:Jonathan Reynolds Official Cabinet Portrait, July 2024 (cropped) 2.jpg	Template:Small Jonathan Reynolds Template:Small	Secretary of State for Business and Trade President of the Board of Trade	Department for Business and Trade	Template:Start date and age
File:Peter Kyle Official Cabinet Portrait, July 2024 (cropped) 2.jpg	Template:Small Peter Kyle Template:Small	Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology	Department for Science, Innovation and Technology	Template:Start date and age
File:Heidi alexander portrait 2024.jpg	Template:Small Heidi Alexander Template:Small	Secretary of State for Transport	Department for Transport	Template:Start date and age
File:Steve Reed Official Cabinet Portrait, July 2024 (cropped) 4.jpg	Template:Small Steve Reed Template:Small	Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs	Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs	Template:Start date and age
File:Lisa Nandy Official Cabinet Portrait, July 2024 (cropped) 2.jpg	Template:Small Lisa Nandy Template:Small	Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport	Department for Culture, Media and Sport	Template:Start date and age
File:Hilary Benn Official Cabinet Portrait, July 2024 (crop 1).jpg	Template:Small Hilary Benn Template:Small	Secretary of State for Northern Ireland	Northern Ireland Office	Template:Start date and age
File:Ian Murray Official Cabinet Portrait, July 2024 (cropped) 2.jpg	Template:Small Ian Murray Template:Small	Secretary of State for Scotland	Scotland Office	Template:Start date and age
File:Jo Stevens Official Cabinet Portrait, July 2024 (cropped) 2.jpg	Template:Small Jo Stevens Template:Small	Secretary of State for Wales	Wales Office	Template:Start date and age
File:Lucy Powell Leader of the House (cropped) 2.jpg	Template:Small Lucy Powell Template:Small	Leader of the House of Commons Lord President of the Council	Office of the Leader of the House of Commons Template:Efn	Template:Start date and age
File:The Baroness Smith of Basildon 2024 (cropped) 2.jpg	Template:Small The Baroness Smith of Basildon Template:Small	Leader of the House of Lords Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal	Office of the Leader of the House of Lords	Template:Start date and age
Ministers who also attend Cabinet
File:Alan Campbell Official Cabinet Portrait, July 2024 (cropped).jpg	Template:Small Sir Alan Campbell Template:Small	Government Chief Whip Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury	HM TreasuryTemplate:Efn	Template:Start date and age
File:Darren Jones Official Cabinet Portrait, July 2024 (cropped) 2.jpg	Template:Small Darren Jones Template:Small	Chief Secretary to the Treasury	HM Treasury	Template:Start date and age
File:Richard Hermer Official Cabinet Portrait, July 2024 (cropped).jpg	Template:Small The Lord Hermer Template:Small	Attorney General for England and Wales Advocate General for Northern Ireland	Attorney General's Office	Template:Start date and age
File:Official portrait of Ellie Reeves MP crop 2, 2023.jpg	Template:Small Ellie Reeves Template:Small	Minister without Portfolio	Cabinet Office	Template:Start date and age
File:Official portrait of Baroness Chapman of Darlington crop 2, 2021.jpg	Template:Small The Baroness Chapman of Darlington Template:Small	Minister of State for International Development, Latin America and Caribbean	Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office	Template:Start date and age