Cabinet Committees explained

What are Cabinet committees?

Cabinet committees are groups of ministers that can “take collective decisions that are binding across government”. They are partly designed to reduce the burden on the full Cabinet by allowing smaller groups of ministers to take decisions on specific policy areas. These committees have been around in some form since the early 20th century.

The Government also has Implementation Taskforces, which former Prime Minister David Cameron introduced alongside Cabinet committees in June 2015. These are groups of ministers designed “to monitor and drive delivery of the Government’s most important cross-cutting priorities”, and their details are published alongside Cabinet committees.

Cabinet committees should not be confused with select committees, which are parliamentary bodies that scrutinise what government does.

What subjects do they cover?

Prime ministers can create, abolish or continue Cabinet committees as they want. They also choose the remit and membership of the committees.

Some committees have existed in some form for a while: for example, the Parliamentary Business and Legislation Committee has existed since 2010 to “consider issues relating to the Government’s parliamentary business and implementation of its legislative programme”. It is relatively similar to the Legislation Committee which existed under Gordon Brown.

Others reflect prime ministerial priorities or political situations. David Cameron formalised the National Security Council as a Cabinet committee in 2010, and in 2015 he abolished the Coalition Committee and the Banking Reform Committee, and introduced a new committee on Europe.

Similarly, Theresa May’s spate of new Brexit-related committees was a response to the referendum result, although her reasons for abolishing the committee on Health and Social Care in 2016 and of the Cyber-security Sub-committee in 2017 are less understandable given the public attention on and political challenges in those areas. 

Since 2010, the combined number of committees, sub-committees, and implementation taskforces has grown from 11 to 20 (peaking at 31 in April 2016). However, the number of full committees has fallen, with more Cabinet business now taking place in sub-committees and taskforces.

Who sits on Cabinet committees?

Ministers – mainly at Cabinet level – but a number of more junior ministers are also committee members. Membership is at the Prime Minister’s discretion, so it may reflect individual ministers’ relationship with the Prime Minister as much as the policy areas they are responsible for.

Damian Green currently sits on all but two committees, sub-committees and taskforces and chairs more of them than any other minister, underlining his role as First Secretary of State and second-in-command to the Prime Minister.

He attends and chairs a lot more than previously – see the change in number of committees attended by ministers, and the change in Cabinet committee chairs.

Green’s position largely explains why the Cabinet Office currently has the highest level of departmental representation on Cabinet committees (in addition, Patrick McLoughlin attends seven, and Caroline Nokes two). See the departmental representation in full. 

How do we know about them?

The Government publishes a list after any changes to the number of committees or their membership. But there is often a delay between membership changing and the list being published. For example, Theresa May became Prime Minister in July 2016 but details were not publisheduntil October, after a Freedom of Information request from the IfG and long after the committees had started meeting.

It’s also difficult to find older lists. Only the current membership is available in a PDF on GOV.UK; even the page history has missed a few updates we know exist. Some are accessible using a search engine like the Internet Archive: Wayback Machine, or (potentially) the UK Government web archive. Some, though not all, have also been presented to Parliament as written ministerial statements and so can be found in the deposited papers library. This all means that the lists are not readily accessible – and some simply don’t exist online.

Does the Government actually use Cabinet committees?

It depends on the Prime Minister – and other ministers. Cabinet committees can be efficient and operative parts of the constitution or merely dignified and decorative.

Although Tony Blair created large numbers of Cabinet committees and sub-committees, one former Cabinet Secretary said that “Blair’s style of government didn’t fit easily with the cabinet committee system… [his] preference was for ad hoc meetings and other ways of managing the Government.”

Cabinet committees took on additional importance under the Coalition Government. Oliver Letwin said they helped "ensure that the Government as a whole would abide by and enforce those rules” that underpinned the Coalition, like its Programme for Government.

George Osborne, though, “didn’t really believe in Cabinet committees” according to Vince Cable and so the economic ones never met.

When the Conservative Government was elected in 2015, David Cameron introduced Implementation Taskforces alongside Cabinet committees. Oliver Letwin told us this was because, while Cabinet committees could be “great for resolving policy differences”, they were not so great at getting into the “nitty gritty detail” about what was happening on the ground with particular policies.

It’s too early to assess how Cabinet committees are being used by Theresa May, but Oliver Letwin told us she has been “revivifying Cabinet committees as places for discussion”.

What does the gender balance look like?

As with other areas of government and politics, women tend to be underrepresented in Cabinet committees.

In July 2017, women held 25% of Cabinet committee places, down from 30% in March 2017. The gender balance of each committee differs – see the current balance.