Topic summary
Cabinet of the United Kingdom
The Cabinet of the United Kingdom is the senior decision-making body of the Government of the United Kingdom. Formally a committee of the Privy Council, it is chaired by the current prime minister as leader of the UK's executive government and the monarch's most senior adviser. Its 28 members are secretaries of state and other senior ministers of state of the UK. Ministries (or 'portfolios') are allocated, and thus cabinet membership is determined, by the prime minister, usually after informal consultation with other members of the political party forming government. By convention, Cabinet ministers (and indeed all ministers) are chosen from amongst the current members of the House of Commons and of the House of Lords; they almost always are members of the party with a Commons majority.
The UK's Ministerial Code states that the business of the Cabinet (and its committees) is mainly the determination of major issues of policy, questions of critical importance to the public and questions on which there is an unresolved argument between departments. The cabinet is essentially the peak strategic and political decision-making body of the government. Its members are bound by constitutional and quasi-constitutional conventions and norms, including collective responsibility and cabinet solidarity.
The work of the cabinet is classified; it is supported by the Cabinet Office, the lead department of the civil service. Cabinet ministers (secretaries of state) are questioned in the Houses of Parliament, as part of ongoing scrutiny of government performance. This questioning is often led by the minister's opposite number: the portfolio's shadow minister. Analogously to the cabinet itself, members of the shadow cabinet are chosen, from within the parliamentary ranks of the official opposition, by the leader of the opposition. Shadow cabinet is thus a structure allowing for some pre-election policy development and preparation organised by portfolio; it operates in some ways as the peak body of the nation's primary alternative executive government.