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Cabinet and its Committees

This chapter is designed to provide you with some general information about the purpose of Cabinet and its Committees. It also explains the principle of collective responsibility.

There are sections on:

• The principle of collective responsibility
• Cabinet Committees and the devolved administrations
• The Cabinet Secretariat

The Cabinet reconciles Ministers' individual responsibilities with their collective responsibility. It is the ultimate arbiter of all Government policy.

Underneath Cabinet sits a structure of Cabinet Committees, some of which have Sub-Committees. Cabinet Committees have two key purposes:

• To relieve the burden on the Cabinet by dealing with business that does not need to be discussed at full Cabinet. Appeals to the Cabinet should be infrequent, and Ministers chairing Cabinet Committees should exercise discretion in advising the Prime Minister whether to allow them.
• To support the principle of collective responsibility by ensuring that, even though a question may never reach the Cabinet itself, it will be fully considered. In this way, the final judgement is sufficiently authoritative that Government as a whole can be expected to accept responsibility for it. In this sense, Cabinet Committee decisions have the same authority as Cabinet decisions.
  

More broadly, Cabinet Committees provide a framework for collective consideration of, and decisions on, major policy issues and questions of significant public interest. They ensure that issues that are of interest to more than one department are properly discussed and that the views of all relevant Ministers are considered. Proposals that meet the criteria for collective consideration need to be put to the relevant Committee(s) or Cabinet itself in good time and with sufficient information to enable Ministers to come to an informed decision. The basic obligation is set out in the Ministerial Code.

The business of Cabinet and Cabinet Committees comprises mainly:

• The co-ordination of particularly complex Government business, such as the legislative programme and constitutional issues;
• Questions which significantly engage the collective responsibility of the Government because they raise major policy issues, or are of critical importance to the public;
• Questions where there is an unresolved difference of opinion between Departments.