Cabinet of the United Kingdom

The Cabinet of the United Kingdom is the senior decision-making body of the Government of the United Kingdom. Formally a committee of the Privy Council, it is chaired by the current prime minister as leader of the UK's executive government and the monarch's most senior adviser. Its 28 members are secretaries of state and other senior ministers of state of the UK. Ministries (or 'portfolios') are allocated, and thus cabinet membership is determined, by the prime minister, usually after informal consultation with other members of the political party forming government. By convention, Cabinet ministers (and indeed all ministers) are chosen from amongst the current members of the House of Commons and of the House of Lords; they almost always are members of the party with a Commons majority.

The UK's Ministerial Code states that the business of the Cabinet (and its committees) is mainly the determination of major issues of policy, questions of critical importance to the public and questions on which there is an unresolved argument between departments. The cabinet is essentially the peak strategic and political decision-making body of the government. Its members are bound by constitutional and quasi-constitutional conventions and norms, including collective responsibility and cabinet solidarity.

The work of the cabinet is classified; it is supported by the Cabinet Office, the lead department of the civil service. Cabinet ministers (secretaries of state) are questioned in the Houses of Parliament, as part of ongoing scrutiny of government performance. This questioning is often led by the minister's opposite number: the portfolio's shadow minister. Analogously to the cabinet itself, members of the shadow cabinet are chosen, from within the parliamentary ranks of the official opposition, by the leader of the opposition. Shadow cabinet is thus a structure allowing for some pre-election policy development and preparation organised by portfolio; it operates in some ways as the peak body of the nation's primary alternative executive government.

History

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. 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". 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.

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. Some ministers may be designated as also attending Cabinet, such as the Attorney General,

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.

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. 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. Sometimes, when a minister from neither House is appointed, they have been granted a customary peerage. The Cabinet is now made up almost entirely of members of the House of Commons. Hazell has suggested merging the offices of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales into one Secretary of State for the Union, However, when David Cameron became prime minister, he held his cabinet meetings on Thursdays again. Under Theresa May, cabinet meetings returned to Tuesday.

The structure and length of meetings varies according to the style of the prime minister and political conditions. Modern meetings can be as short as 30 minutes.

All ministers, including those who do not themselves sit in the cabinet (eg, more junior ministers), are bound by the constitutional convention of collective ministerial responsibility, which is sometimes called Cabinet solidarity. This convention requires cabinet members (and, by extension, members of the government more broadly: ministers) not to speak publicly against decisions taken by cabinet, even if they have—during the cabinet meeting or before it—been opposed to the substance of the decision made.

Importance

Cabinet ministers, like all ministers, are appointed and may be dismissed by the monarch without notice or reason, generally 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 is traditionally described as merely (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.

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 recent 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.

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.

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." 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."

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.

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.

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"). 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.

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, as did Michael Foley in The British Presidency (2000). 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).

Current Cabinet

The current cabinet is led by Prime Minister Keir Starmer and succeeded the Sunak ministry. This is Starmer's second cabinet following the 2024 General Election.

the makeup of the current Cabinet is as follows:

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"

| colspan=5 | 50px Starmer ministry

! colspan=2 scope="col" | Minister

! Office(s)

! Department

! Took office

! colspan=5 | Cabinet ministers

|125x125px

| scope="row" | Sir Keir Starmer

| Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, Minister for the Union

| Cabinet Office

|frameless|125x125px

| scope="row" |David Lammy

| Deputy Prime Minister, Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice

| Ministry of Justice

|frameless|120x120px

| scope="row" |Rachel Reeves

| Chancellor of the Exchequer

| HM Treasury

| frameless|125x125px

| scope="row" | Yvette Cooper

| Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs

| Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

| frameless|125x125px

| scope="row" | Shabana Mahmood

| Secretary of State for the Home Department

| Home Office

|125x125px

| scope="row" | Pat McFadden

| Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

| Department for Work and Pensions

|rowspan=3| 125x125px

|rowspan=3| Darren Jones

| Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister

|rowspan=3| Cabinet Office

| Minister for Intergovernmental Relations

| Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster

| frameless|125x125px

| scope="row" | John Healey

| Secretary of State for Defence

| Ministry of Defence

|frameless|125x125px

| scope="row" | James Murray

| Secretary of State for Health and Social Care

| Department of Health and Social Care

|rowspan=2| frameless|120x120px

|rowspan=2| Bridget Phillipson

| Secretary of State for Education

|rowspan=2| Department for Education

| Minister for Women and Equalities

|125x125px

| scope="row" | Ed Miliband

| Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero

| Department for Energy Security and Net Zero

|frameless|125x125px

| scope="row" | Steve Reed

|Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government

|Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

|125x125px

| scope="row" | Peter Kyle

| Secretary of State for Business and Trade, President of the Board of Trade

| Department for Business and Trade, UK Export Finance

|125x125px

| scope="row" | Liz Kendall

| Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology

| Department for Science, Innovation and Technology

| 125x125px

| scope="row" | Heidi Alexander

| Secretary of State for Transport

| Department for Transport

|frameless|125x125px

| scope="row" | Emma Reynolds

| Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

| Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

| frameless|125x125px

| scope="row" | Lisa Nandy

| Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport

| Department for Culture, Media and Sport

| alt=|125x125px

| scope="row" | Hilary Benn

| Secretary of State for Northern Ireland

| Northern Ireland Office

||frameless|125x125px

| scope="row" | Douglas Alexander

| Secretary of State for Scotland

| Scotland Office

|frameless|125x125px

| scope="row" | Jo Stevens

| Secretary of State for Wales

| Wales Office

|frameless|125x125px

| scope="row" | Jonathan Reynolds

|Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Chief Whip)

| HM Treasury

| frameless|125x125px

| scope="row" | Angela Smith, Baroness Smith of Basildon

| Lord Privy Seal, Leader of the House of Lords

| Office of the Leader of the House of Lords

! colspan=5 | Ministers who also attend Cabinet

||frameless|125x125px

| scope="row" | Sir Alan Campbell

| Lord President of the Council, Leader of the House of Commons

| Office of the Leader of the House of Commons

|frameless|125x125px

| scope="row" | Lucy Rigby

| Chief Secretary to the Treasury

| HM Treasury

|frameless|125x125px

| scope="row" | Richard Hermer, Baron Hermer

| Attorney General

| Attorney General's Office

| 125x125px

| Jenny Chapman, Baroness Chapman of Darlington

|Minister of State (International Development and Africa)

|Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

|125x125px

| Nick Thomas-Symonds

| Paymaster General, Minister for the Cabinet Office (Minister for the Constitution and European Union Relations)

| Cabinet Office

Attending Cabinet since

|125x125px

| scope="row" | Anna Turley

| Minister of State (Minister without Portfolio)

| Cabinet Office

List of Cabinets 1900–2024

Cabinets of the Unionist government, 1895–1905
Cabinets of Henry Campbell-Bannerman's ministry, 1905–1908
Cabinets of H. H. Asquith's ministries, 1908–1915
Cabinets of H. H. Asquith's coalition ministry, 1915–1916
Cabinets of David Lloyd George's ministries, 1916–1922
Cabinets of Bonar Law's ministry, 1922–1923
Cabinets of Stanley Baldwin's first ministry, 1923–1924
Cabinets of Ramsay MacDonald's first ministry, 1924
Cabinets of Stanley Baldwin's second ministry, 1924–1929
Cabinets of Ramsay MacDonald's second ministry, 1929–1931
Cabinets of Ramsay MacDonald's first national government, 1931
Cabinets of Ramsay MacDonald's second national government, 1931–1935
Cabinets of Stanley Baldwin's national government, 1935–1937
Cabinets of Neville Chamberlain's national government, 1937–1939
Cabinets of Neville Chamberlain's war ministry, 1939–1940
Cabinets of Winston Churchill's war ministry, 1940–1945
Cabinets of Winston Churchill's caretaker ministry, 1945
Cabinets of Clement Attlee's first ministry, 1945–1950
Cabinets of Clement Attlee's second ministry, 1950–1951
Cabinets of Winston Churchill's third ministry, 1951–1955
Cabinets of Anthony Eden's ministry, 1955–1957
Cabinets of Harold Macmillan's first ministry, 1957–1959
Cabinets of Harold Macmillan's second ministry, 1959–1963
Cabinets of Alec Douglas-Home's ministry, 1963–1964
Cabinets of Harold Wilson's first and second ministries, 1964–1970
Cabinets of Ted Heath's ministry, 1970–1974
Cabinets of Harold Wilson's third and fourth ministries, 1974–1976
Cabinets of James Callaghan's ministry, 1976–1979
Cabinets of Margaret Thatcher's first ministry, 1979–1983
Cabinets of Margaret Thatcher's second ministry, 1983–1987
Cabinets of Margaret Thatcher's third ministry, 1987–1990
Cabinets of John Major's first ministry, 1990–1992
Cabinets of John Major's second ministry, 1992–1997
Cabinets of Tony Blair's first ministry, 1997–2001
Cabinets of Tony Blair's second ministry, 2001–2005
Cabinets of Tony Blair's third ministry, 2005–2007
Cabinets of Gordon Brown's ministry, 2007–2010
Cabinets of the Cameron–Clegg coalition, 2010–2015
Cabinets of David Cameron's second ministry, 2015–2016
Cabinets of Theresa May's first ministry, 2016–2017
Cabinets of Theresa May's second ministry, 2017–2019
Cabinets of Boris Johnson's first ministry, 2019
Cabinets of Boris Johnson's second ministry, 2019–2022
Cabinets of Liz Truss's ministry, September 2022 – October 2022
Cabinets of Rishi Sunak's ministry, 2022–2024
Cabinets of Keir Starmer's ministry, 2024–present

Cabinet of the United Kingdom

History

Importance

Current Cabinet

List of Cabinets 1900–2024

See also

Notes

References

General references

Specific references

External links