Q2 – The cabinet
A)
Cabinet committees provide a framework for collective consideration of and decisions on major policies and issues of public interest. This enables decisions to be fully considered by those ministers most closely concerned in a way that the government as a whole can be accepted to accept responsibility for them.
The prime minister chooses the people to be in the cabinets and also they affect how much power and what type of committee they are. Some PM’s place a great deal of emphases on them, some don’t. The prime minister controls what type of committees goes on and who is involved. However cabinets exist because the prime minister cannot specialise in everything and so cabinets are they to inform the prime minister of all the details. Sometimes after this the prime minister will then make his decision, sometimes the PM will consult the members in the cabinet when making the decision.
B)
It is quite clear that the U.K has cabinet governments because the workload would be much too much for one leader to be able to cope with. Even if the PM wants to run the country without anyone else, there is simply no way he would be able to do this. There are multiple decisions that have to be made and the cabinet ministers are the only people who have the skill and knowledge to be able to able to manage every matter that arises. It would be physically impossible for the PM to be able to manage every department in the government and to manage all the legalisation that has to go though the government each day. These responsibilities are handed out to the cabinet ministers to organise the government and meet with the PM to discuss all the biggest decisions that he has to make. The other reason that proves that the government is run by the cabinet is that the cabinet has to represent everyone in the government. The cabinet is also here to represent everyone in the Labour party. This is because everyone in the labour party has different ideas and viewpoints, however they all need to support the leader because the leader has not been elected by anyone. The power of the elected party comes in the form of it’s MP’s it’s Leader. Blair was never elected by the public so unless he can keep his party on his side, then he can be removed as leader. If the cabinet did not exist then there would be no way to organise all the MP’s and get anything done. The way the cabinet is done is so all the MP’s can have a voice in the running of the Labour party. These views are then put forward in the meetings. The cabinet is not just a tool more helping the PM make decisions; it also enables the elected party to act as an entity and not hundreds of individual voices. The cabinet also keeps the power of the MP’s to a minimum so that any leadership challenges are kept to a minimum.
