The PM and Cabinet
What do they do? - 'High politics' including international affairs, political leadership, representing the state and national defence. However, they also do mundane politics like formulating and implementing policy. The UK executive can be seen as more of an independent collective, whereby they need each other. They propose 2 main types of legislation. One being primary legislation, which is laws passed by parliament, for example, Statute law, and the second being secondary legislation, also known as delegated legislation.
The Prime Minister is seen as powerful due to the fact that they aren't bound to written laws and there aren't many limits. The only constitutional requirement is that they can 'command the confidence of Parliament'. Their 3 main types of powers include prerogative powers, which are powers that don't require Parliamentary approval, for example, making and ratifying treaties, like Tony Blair in 1998, signing the Good Friday Agreement. There are 3 types of prerogative powers, which are appointing ministers, granting honours and signing treaties. Controlling the agenda whereby the government proposes bills for Parliament to debate. Finally, secondary legislation, which is roughly 3,500 issued per year. A PM will also have personal and circumstantial powers, and therefore these will vary due to the political climate each PM finds themself in (like a huge landslide win). Personal powers will be down to their characteristics, like a leader with good charisma or a party unifier.
When asked about the Cabinet, you should refer to the people and meetings themselves. There are usually around 20 cabinet members, and they usually take the lead in certain policy areas. A PM often tweaks the roles of the cabinet office to reflect current issues. There are also several other members who are given the right to attend but not full ministerial responsibility. These are known as Ministers Without Portfolio, whereby they have no department to run; this is useful for providing representation or to keep them from speaking out against your government, an infamous example being Michael Gove. Unlike the US cabinet meetings, here are not televised and are kept secret.
Cabinet meeting functions include: Registering decisions, discussing and making decisions, reporting on decisions without it being public and finally settling disputes, for example, in 1985 Hesletine resigned due to the fact that Thatcher refused to allow cabinet discussion for a dispute he was having with her. Most decisions can't be settled in one-hour meetings once a week, so they are down to cabinet committees. There are 4 types here, Ministerial Standing Committees (permanent high-level for major issues, for example, the national security council), Ministerial Sub Committees (more focused but usually tend to report to standing committees), for example economic affairs committee. Ad Hoc Committees, which are set up to deal with a particular issue, are also a type of committee, one example being the COBRA committee. The last type is an Implementation Task Force set up to track the progress of a policy initiative, for example, Boris Johnson set up the 'Build Back Better' task force to check up on his plans for economic growth and recovery.
Cabinet members' powers include controlling a department, for example, for work and pensions. In a cabinet meeting, they all have an equal vote and are all members of committees. Collective responsibility is crucial to the Cabinet Office; this is a system of responsibility and accountability. It works in 3 parts; one being secrecy, which was broken by Suella Braverman when she shared a government document with an MP outside of the Government. The second part is binding decisions, whereby once a decision is made, you stick to it or resign or expect to be dismissed, for example, Ian Duncan Smith, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, resigned in 2016 due to not supporting the budget cuts for disability benefits. The final part is a confidence vote where the entire government must resign if there is a confidence vote, the last being in James Callaghan's government. However, there are official exceptions to these. The exceptions include when it is during a coalition, some parties may agree to suspend collective responsibility for certain things. This occurred in 2016 when Liberal Democrats were officially allowed to oppose the Trident renewal. Another exception is during a free vote or referendum. Individual responsibility refers to when individual ministers must stand by and take responsibility for their own decisions or departmental decisions to protect the government as a whole. This occurred in the case of David Blunkett, who resigned due to a scandal involving a fast-tracked visa for his nanny. Once this was proven to be false, he was reappointed, but nevertheless saved the government's reputation.
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