An important function of the Cabinet is to co-ordinate and control the work of government departments, and each Cabinet minister usually controls a department such as the department for education, headed by MP David Blunkett. The Cabinet approves decisions made by Cabinet ministers, such as the Budget made by the Chancellor, and the Cabinet is responsible for communication of all Cabinet and Cabinet committee decisions to various government departments. Therefore, most Cabinet ministers have a dual responsibility; not only to their department but also to their collective executive body as well, with the non-departmental ministers such as the Chancellor of the Exchequer being able to take a view that transcends departments.
Even though the role of the Cabinet may be variable, there are arguments to say that despite the great power that the Cabinet holds, the measurement of this power may vary between Governments. It can be argued that under Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, Britain had a Prime Ministerial Government, with the Cabinet having relatively less power than the leader; however under John Major many people say Britain had a Cabinet Government, as they made all the decisions and Major was relatively powerless to his committee. Especially in the present Blair government, there are even arguments to say that the role of the Cabinet may have diminished as administrative power lies in the Civil Service and authoritative power lies in Blair's personal advisors such as Jonathon Powell and Alistair Campbell. However, the Cabinet's many roles will exist as long as the Cabinet exists, and as long as they continue to fuse the executive and legislature, they will continue to be a very powerful aspect of the Government today.
Collective responsibility in the Cabinet states that any minister either unable or unwilling to support a Cabinet policy decision must resign from Government, and all Cabinet and government members must 'stand and fall' together and publicly agree with any decisions made. It was originally introduced to prevent the king from playing off Cabinet ministers against each other. There are various purposes of collective responsibility: clarity, unity, coherence and accountability; the government needs to appear combined on the outside to prove that they are the best Party to form the government, and they need to abide by the convention of collective responsibility to prove this to the media, the opposition party and the public. Collective responsibility is constitutionally important in enabling Parliament to secure information and to question and criticise the government and its policies. It works in unison with individual ministerial responsibility, which states that each minister must be held accountable for the running of his or her department and for its policies; an attack on an individual minister normally means an attack on the whole government which can be bad for the majority party, especially before election time.
Collective responsibility strengthens the hand of the Prime Minister, as they know which ministers are unlikely to publicly disagree or resign. They are then able to pick and mix the most loyal and trustworthy ministers to form the Cabinet. Also, Junior Ministers have recently been subject to the convention, along with Parliamentary private secretaries, whips and the shadow cabinet. This may be a positive thing as there is more coherence in politics, but it may be false unity on issues such as Poll Tax as the majority of ministers will not want to vote in favour of an issue that will upset the voting population.
Another criticism of the concept of Cabinet responsibility is the fact that there are many long standing arguments between members of the Cabinet, such as those between John Prescott and Gordon Brown. Even though this feud is likely to be a battle for power as they are probably the next most powerful political figures along with Jack Straw, it still shows a lack of unity within the Cabinet. Also, the concept implies that power and responsibility will be shared equally between all members of the Cabinet, but the power aspect of this statement is wrong as Brown, Prescott, Straw and Blair have considerably more power than the other, and overall Blair has the ultimate power to choose and fire Cabinet ministers.
