The Structure of the Executive
Government Departments, Junior Ministers, and Executive Agencies
Roles of the Executive- legislation, budget, policy, royal prerogative powers, secondary legislation.
Complete with studies, cases, examples and statistics
The Structure, Role and Powers of
the Executive
The Structure of the Executive
The PM is head of the executive, who chairs cabinet meetings and sets its agenda.
A PM selects their own cabinet and junior ministers (who work in departments under the
cabinet member who have specific roles).
The PM has the power of patronage with help from whips to make decisions. The whips might
make recommendations for who to put in cabinet positions, which are often those who have
shown a high level of loyalty to the PM.
Ministers must be selected from one of the two Houses. Occasionally someone is made a lord so
they can be selected as a minister.
The PM decides on who sits on cabinet committees to make decisions on key areas e.g., the
National Security Council, COVID-19 strategy, Climate Action Implementation Committee).
The PM can create a new apartment (such as the Department for Exiting the European Union) or
abolish them. PMs can also merge departments, as the Department for International
Development was with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
The Cabinet is made up of 20-23 senior members and is supported by the Cabinet Office (a
branch of the civil service) which is headed by the Cabinet Secretary (top job in the civil service).
Cabinet makes decisions on key areas of policy and has collective responsibility. Once decisions
are made, all members must defend it or resign. If a prime minister loses a cabinet vote, then
the PM should resign.
Government Departments, Junior Ministers, and Executive Agencies
Government departments are headed by a senior minister/secretary of state. They are
responsible for a broad area, such as defense, transport, education, or health.
Each minister heading a department (Secretary of State) is supported by two tiers of junior
ministers who have more specific responsibilities in a narrower topic area:
Ministers of State are second tier Ministers, below Secretaries of State, of which there are
usually one to three in a department. These Ministers are more experienced and powerful than
the bottom tier of Junior Ministers and will handle – or assist Cabinet Ministers with – the more
complex issues.
The most junior Ministers are Parliamentary Undersecretaries of State, of whom there will be
one in a small department and three or four in a large department. They do a great deal of
important work, including piloting Bills through Parliament. They also carry out a wide range of
representational and other duties, which means that they are always getting up early in the
morning to attend events outside London, and then staying in the House until late in the evening
to speak in adjournment debates. They take important decisions on individual cases and narrow
issues, but not those politically important, which are reserved for their seniors.
Departments also oversee Executive agencies, for example, the DVLA is overseen by the
Department for Transport. The Health Department alone oversees 29 Executive agencies.
Roles of the Executive:
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