History of Cabinet

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 479.

Meetings

The Cabinet

The Cabinet is the committee at the centre of the British political system and is the supreme decision-making body in government.

Members – about 20 senior ministers chosen by the Prime Minister.

It decides on government policy and co-ordinates the work of the different government departments. Cabinet meetings are private and its Members should not disclose any information about them.

Every Tuesday during Parliament, Secretaries of State from all departments and some other ministers meet in the Cabinet room in Downing Street to discuss the big issues of the day. Meetings are currently attended by 22 paid ministers and one unpaid minister appointed to Cabinet, and six other invited ministers and peers.

The Prime Minister chairs the meetings, selects its members, and also recommends their appointment as ministers by the Monarch. The Secretary of the Cabinet is responsible for preparing records of its discussions and decisions.

The modern history of the Cabinet began in the 16th Century with the Privy Council, a small group of advisers to the Monarch.

Sir Robert Walpole the first Prime Minister, held occasional meetings of the King's Ministers - Cabinet - but not in its modern form.

The 1832 Reform Act emphasised the need for government to have the confidence of Parliament as well as the Monarch and for it to act coherently.

William Pitt (1783-1801) established the right of the PM to ask ministers to resign. So the conventions of collective Cabinet responsibility and Prime Ministerial control developed. This enabled Ministers to stand together against Parliament under clear leadership.

Up to 1916, a letter written by the PM to the Monarch was the only recorded decisions of Cabinet.

The modern Cabinet system was set up by Prime Minister David Lloyd George during his premiership of 1916–22, with a Cabinet Office and Secretariat, committee structures, unpublished Minutes, and a clearer relationship with departmental Cabinet Ministers. (The formal procedures, practice and proceedings of the Cabinet remain largely unpublished, if not secret.)