Define: Cabinet

In the context of the UK law and government, the Cabinet refers to the group of senior government ministers who are responsible for making key policy decisions and overseeing the administration of the country. The Cabinet is chaired by the Prime Minister and typically consists of the heads of major government departments and other senior ministers chosen by the Prime Minister. It serves as the principal decision-making body of the government, where important matters of policy, legislation, and governance are discussed and debated. The Cabinet operates collectively, with decisions reached through consensus or majority vote. It plays a central role in shaping government policy and coordinating the implementation of government initiatives across different departments and agencies. As the highest executive authority in the UK government, the Cabinet exercises significant influence over the direction and priorities of the country’s governance.

A short legal summary of the term “cabinet” is that it refers to a group of high-ranking government officials who are appointed by the executive branch of a government. The Cabinet is responsible for advising the head of government and making important decisions on policy matters. The members of the Cabinet are typically chosen from the ruling political party or coalition and hold specific ministerial positions. The Cabinet’s role and powers may vary depending on the country’s political system and constitution.

The Cabinet is the collective decision-making body of Her Majesty’s Government in the United Kingdom. It is composed of the Prime Minister and, in recent decades, from eighteen to twenty-four Cabinet Ministers. These ‘Ministers of the Crown’ constitute the most senior level of government officials and are assigned key executive roles within the government. They are selected primarily from the elected membership of the House of Commons (and, less frequently, from the membership of the House of lords) by the Prime Minister. Cabinet Ministers are heads of government departments, mostly with the office of ‘Secretary of State for X’, where ‘X’ may be, for instance, ‘Defence’, ‘Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, ‘the Home Department’, etc. The statutory position that all Secretaries of State jointly hold the same office and exercise the same governmental powers strengthens the collective coordinating function of the Cabinet.

Traditional constitutional theory holds that the Cabinet is the ultimate decision-making body of the executive within the system of government present in the United Kingdom. The nineteenth-century constitutional theorist Walter Bagehot, for instance, described the Cabinet as the ‘efficient secret’ of the British political system (see, for example, Bagehot’s ‘The English Constitution’). However, some theorists and commentators now contend that the Prime Minister’s office has surpassed the Cabinet in recent decades in terms of power and authority, reducing the political and decision-making authority of the Cabinet to what it once was.

The Cabinet is technically the executive committee of Her Majesty’s Privy Council, a historic body with legislative, judicial and executive functions. The decisions of this body, whose sizeable membership includes members of the opposition party in Parliament, are generally implemented either under the existing powers of individual government departments or by an order in council.

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This glossary post was last updated: 30th April 2024.