Britain: An official handbook > 1959

BRITAIN: AN OFFICIAL HANDBOOK
42
additional office of First Lord Commissioner of the Treasury, and may also hold
another portfolio. At the present time, he is the minister responsible for atomic
energy.
It is the duty of the Prime Minister to inform the Sovereign of the general
business of the Government; to preside over the Cabinet; and to exercise a general
supervision over Departments, settling departmental differences and approving
important departmental decisions where reference to the Cabinet is not required.
The Prime Minister speaks for the Government in the House of Commons on the
most important topics and answers questions on its general administration in that
House.
The Prime Minister’s other responsibilities include making recommendations
for the appointment of Church of England archbishops, bishops and other senior
clergy and incumbents of Crown livings, as well as for appointments to high judicial
and civil offices such as that of the Lord Chief Justice and certain other judges,
Lord Lieutenants of counties,1 Regius Professors in certain universities and trustees
of certain national museums. He also makes recommendations for the award of
most civil honours and distinctions.
The Cabinet
The Cabinet is a conventional organ of government composed of a number of
ministers selected by the Prime Minister. Membership is not fixed, although the
holders of certain important ministerial offices are always included; the number of
members is now usually less than twenty.
The origins of the Cabinet can be traced back to informal conferences between
the Sovereign and his or her leading ministers held in the seventeenth century
independently of the Privy Council. After the Sovereign’s withdrawal from an
active role in politics in the eighteenth century, and the development of organised
political parties stimulated by successive extensions of the franchise from 1832
onwards, the Cabinet assumed its modern form.
The Cabinet is designed to formulate general policy, to bring about co-operation
between the different forces of the State without interfering with their legal inde¬
pendence, and to exercise general control. Its functions, as defined in the Report
of the Machinery of Government Committee (Haldane Committee), 1918, Cd. 9230,
are: the final determination of the policy to be submitted to Parliament; the
supreme control of the national executive in accordance with the policy agreed by
Parliament; and the continuous co-ordination and delimitation of the authority of
the several Departments of State. It has no legal authority, however, since its
decisions are valid by convention and not by law.
In determining Government policy, whether in the form of proposed legislation
for the consideration of Parliament or otherwise, the Cabinet is able to take into
account the widest possible range of interests in the country as a whole, by means
of an elaborate machinery of consultation, both formal and informal. For the
investigation of matters considered to be of the greatest importance, and where
time is not of the essence, the procedure frequently adopted is the appointment, by
Royal Warrant, of a Royal Commission, whose members are selected on grounds
of their wide experience and diverse knowledge of the subject matter covered by
its terms of reference. A Royal Commission formulates recommendations in the
light of written and oral evidence from many interested organisations and individuals
and submits a report containing recommendations, which the Government may
1 The office of Lord Lieutenant in the county was first created in the sixteenth century.
Its holder was chief among the county justices and commander of the county militia.