United Kingdom Cabinet Committee - Committee Procedure

Committee Procedure

Committee membership is limited to ministers, but non-ministers may attend in some cases. In particular, the National Security Council is routinely attended by senior military, intelligence and security officials. Members of the Prime Minister's office - including the Prime Minister himself - may attend any committee. The Prime Minister's attendance does not mean that he will chair the committee, despite being the most senior Cabinet member present, though he may choose to do so.

In the 2010 coalition government, each Cabinet committee includes members of both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats. Furthermore, the general pattern is for committees to have a Chair and a Deputy Chair, one from each party. There is a Coalition Committee, and an operational working group, to handle appeals over coalition disputes and to plan future policy.

Former committees with non-ministers as full members include the Economic Advisory Council, whose membership was made up of a combination of ministers and experts in economics. The Committee of Imperial Defence, a parallel Cabinet for military policy which existed from 1904 until 1939, included ministers, heads of the armed services, and civil servants. Between 1997 and 2001, there was a Ministerial Consultative Committee with the Liberal Democratic Party which included senior Liberal Democrats as well as Labour ministers.

Until 1992, the list of cabinet committees, their membership, and their terms of reference were secret, with rare exceptions. During the Second World War, details of the War Cabinet structure were communicated to Parliament; Winston Churchill had previously announced a Standing Committee on National Expenditure in his 1925 Budget statement. The existence and membership of the Defence and Overseas Policy Committee was announced in 1963, coinciding with the amalgamation of the service ministries into a single Ministry of Defence. Margaret Thatcher confirmed the continuing existence of this committee in the House of Commons in 1979, along with standing committees for Economic Strategy, Home and Social Affairs, and Legislation. The secrecy was due to the concern that public knowledge of Cabinet procedure would lead to a loss of faith in collective responsibility (if it became known that only a subset of the Cabinet had been involved in making a given decision) and undue pressure being put on committee chairs once their specific policy responsibilities became known. Whether decisions were made by the entire Cabinet, or by a committee, is not revealed at present.

Cabinet committees are shadowed by "official committees" made up of civil servants from the relevant departments. Official committees follow a thirty-year secrecy rule with respect to their existence and membership.