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Official Committee Meetings

Rigorous scrutiny and discussion of the issues by a strong interdepartmental official-level Committee can have a significant impact in making a Ministerial meeting more effective. They are organised and chaired by the Committee Secretariat when required.

Formal official committees can be established for most Cabinet Committees. They are usually refered to as O meetings (e.g. ED(HPR)(O), DA(O) etc.).

Official Committee meetings help the Secretariat and participating departments to:

• Monitor policy development, particularly in cross-departmental priority areas, in order to identify when a Committee meeting is required;
• Monitor progress on departmental action points from previous Committee meetings;
• Canvass views and developments to inform the future work programme for the Committee;
• Resolve interdepartmental disputes where possible in a neutral setting before elevating the issues to Ministers;
• Prepare agendas and facilitate forward look excercises that establish the likely business of the Committee;
• Identify areas that a Committee paper needs to cover to allow Ministers to focus their discussion on the key issues;
• Road test the effectiveness of draft Committee papers in advance of the Committee meeting; and
• Provide briefing for the Chair or Ministers which is informed by issues likely to be raised by other Ministers.

In some cases, these official Committee meetings may resolve all the issues so that it no longer proves necessary to get Ministers together to discuss. The issues can instead be cleared by correspondence or brought back to the Committee at a more appropriate stage. On other occasions, there may be multiple official Committee meetings before an issue is ready to go to the Committee.

It is important that officials of sufficient seniority who are able to represent and reach agreement on behalf of the department attend official Committee meetings to ensure that there is thorough discussion and that decisions can be taken.

Papers for official Committee meetings should also be circulated with adequate notice and should be focussed and concise in presentation.

For the main domestic policy Cabinet Committees, those invited to the supporting 'O' Committee will include as appropriate representatives from Number 10 (private office and policy unit), Strategy Unit, Treasury, lead department(s) and other departments whose Minister is a member of the Committee.