cabinet. The executive committee of the government, appointed by and answerable to the
prime minister. It evolved in the later 17th cent. out of the
Privy Council, which had become too large and too miscellaneous to be efficient. During Anne's reign, the inner group of ministers called themselves the cabinet when the queen was present, the lords of the committee when she was not. In 1710/11 there were 62 cabinet meetings and 106 committee meetings, the attendance at cabinet averaging eleven and at the committee five or six. Two developments of crucial importance were the withdrawal of the monarch from attendance during George I's reign, allowing the first minister to take the chair and impose his views on his colleagues, and the slow growth of the principle of cabinet solidarity.
In the 18th cent., the cabinet was overwhelmingly aristocratic. George
Grenville in the 1760s had a cabinet of nine, in which he was the only commoner—yet he was the nephew of a viscount and younger brother of an earl. Not until the later 19th cent. did commoners predominate: in 1892
Gladstone's cabinet had five peers and twelve commoners. Like most committees, the cabinet has tended to grow, with periodic attempts to prune it, particularly in wartime. The Fox–North coalition in 1783 had seven cabinet members;
Liverpool in 1812 had thirteen;
Peel in 1841 had fourteen;
Salisbury in 1895 had nineteen;
MacDonald in 1924 had 20, and John
Major in July 1995 had 23.
J. A. Cannon
In
Bagehot's words, the cabinet links the legislative part of the state to the executive. Its members are normally drawn from the majority party in the House of Commons, together with some peers: at the same time, they head the executive departments and effectively constitute the leadership of the party. The government as a whole consists of about 100 ministers, ministers of state, junior ministers, and whips: as a body, it never meets. The decisions of the cabinet are the decisions of the government. Its internal disagreements are governed by the hallowed doctrine of collective responsibility, which declares that decisions taken by the cabinet are binding on all its members, and indeed on all members of the government. A minister who disagrees with his cabinet colleagues may express those differences within the cabinet room, but unless he resigns, he may not voice them outside. To the world beyond, the cabinet presents a united front, however harsh the disputes may have been.
The 20th cent. saw the transformation of the 19th-cent. cabinet under the twin impact of war and welfare. The First World War led to the introduction of the cabinet secretariat, one of whose tasks was to minute the decisions of the cabinet. What is remarkable is that the cabinet had for so long been run on the basis of human memory. The exigencies of war meant that the cabinet could no longer work in such a casual way, but the growing functions of the state in economic and social matters would, in any case, have required the development.
The extension of the state's functions imposed a further burden on an institution better suited to the minimal state of the 19th cent. Committees had long been a feature of the cabinet but they were
ad hoc and temporary. The modern system of permanent standing committees of the cabinet dates effectively from the Second World War. Small committees of ministers, chaired by either the prime minister or a senior member of the government and including ministers not in the cabinet, deal with matters too important, too sensitive, or too broad to be determined within a single department. Over the years the system developed, so that by 1995 there were nineteen cabinet committees or subcommittees. These included the committee on economic and domestic policy, chaired by the prime minister; another on the environment, presided over by the deputy prime minister; and a committee on public expenditure whose chairman was the chancellor of the Exchequer.
These committees have, in effect, become subcabinets. Membership is small and largely consists of those ministers whose departments are most closely concerned. Their brief is to resolve as many issues as possible without going to the full cabinet, and if they cannot reach a decision to refer the question to that body. The powers of cabinet committees are therefore extensive and the principle of collective responsibility applies as forcefully there as to the cabinet itself.
The permanent committees are not the only way in which decisions are taken outside the full cabinet. Quite apart from decisions ministers reach in their departments, decisions may be taken by officially constituted
ad hoc committees or by the prime minister after consultation with another minister or after discussion with informal groups of ministers. Many decisions going beyond departmental boundaries, or involving questions of general government policy, are taken outside the traditional full cabinet.
The crucial problem of 20th-cent. cabinet government was to adapt an institution which developed in the 19th cent. Though the cabinet has grown in size in absolute terms, a smaller proportion of ministers are appointed to it. Cabinet committees were one response: another solution has been to create super-ministries, e.g. the Department of the Environment, headed by a secretary of state who sits in the cabinet, containing a number of subordinate ministers who, in earlier years, would have been heads of their department and would have had a seat in the cabinet.
The growth of cabinet committees has meant that the cabinet itself no longer has the central importance it once had. ‘Cabinet meetings’, said Nigel Lawson, former chancellor of the Exchequer, ‘are ninety per cent of the time a dignified [rather than an] efficient part of cabinet government.’
Recent discussion has emphasized the increasing power of the prime minister and the declining status of the cabinet. The argument has perhaps been overdone, but there is little doubt that during the 20th cent. the office of prime minister expanded in power, partly at the expense of the cabinet. However, the cabinet remains the ultimate court of appeal within the government. Moreover, it remains, along with Parliament and in certain fields the judiciary, one of the organs which confers legitimacy possessed neither by cabinet committees nor by the prime minister himself.
Hugh Berrington
