Note (Back) — Chapter III

67. Regular and Occasional Members.—The cabinet comprises a variable group of the principal ministers of state upon whom devolves singly the task of administering the affairs of their respective departments and, collectively, that of shaping the policy and directing the conduct of the government as a whole. The position occupied by the cabinet in the constitutional system is anomalous, but transcendently important. As has been pointed out, the cabinet as such is unknown to English law. Legally, the cabinet member derives his administrative function from the fact of his appointment to a ministerial post, and his advisory function from his membership in the Privy Council. The cabinet exists as an informal, extra-legal ministerial group into whose hands, through prolonged historical development, has fallen the supreme direction of both the executive and the legislative activities of the state. The composition of the body is determined largely by custom, but in part by passing circumstance. Certain ministerial heads are invariably included: the First Lord of the Treasury, the Lord Chancellor, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the five Secretaries of State, and the First Lord of the Admiralty. Two dignitaries who possess no administrative function, i.e., the Lord President of the Privy Council and the Lord Privy Seal,[88] are likewise always included. Beyond this, the make-up of the cabinet group is left to the discretion of the premier. The importance of a given office at the moment and the wishes of the appointee, together with general considerations of party expediency, may well enter into a decision relative to the seating of individual departmental heads. In recent years the presidents of the Board of Trade, the Board of Education, and the Local Government Board have regularly been included, together with the Lord Lieutenant or the Chief Secretary for Ireland.[89] The Secretary for Scotland and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster are usually included; the Postmaster-General and the President of the Board of Agriculture frequently, and the First Commissioner of Works and the Lord Chancellor for Ireland occasionally.