The Parliamentary Executive, 1868–1914, and after
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.1974.tb00184.x |
| Date | 01 September 1974 |
| Published date | 01 September 1974 |
The Parliamentary Executive, 1868-1 91
4,
and after
F
.
M
.
G.
W
I
LL
S
ON
Dr.
H’illson
is
now
Warden
of
Goldsmith’ College, London. This article was
prepared while he was Provost of Stevenson College, Universiiy
of
California,
Santa Cruz.
It
is a fundamental
but
elementary obscrvation that in modern Britain
the supreme control and direction
of
the central government at any one
time is vested in a group of political officials called Ministers, and that
in
all save rare circumstanccs the Ministcrs are either
MPS
or Peers, drawn
from
thc party
or
coalition of parties which commands
a
majority in
the
House
of Commons. The Ministers include members of the Cabinet;
heads
of
departments and holders of senior non-departmental posts outside
the Cabinet; deputy and assistant hlinisters called Ministers
of
State
or
Parliamentary Secretaries; Law Oficcrs
;
Government Whips; and the
holdcrs
of
a
few
other offices, mostly in the Royal Household, some having
political duties other than whipping. Collcctivcly this group is known
as
The Government-of-the-day,
or
The Adniinistration,
or
Th
MiizistTy.
It
never meets as a body to do formal business, and opcratcs through sub-
groups and individuals. The score
of
leaders constituting the Cabinet
come togethcr regularly,
and
other sections within the totality
of
a
Ministry
have an equally strong sense of identity
-
the
Whips,
for
instance, and the
sinallcr collcction of Ministers within
a
single, big department, or the
niembers
of
a long-standing intcr-departmental committee. And when,
as
is
usual, the Government-of-thc-day is drawn from one party, all its
members may be present simultaneously at
some
major party gathering.
But the notion
of
the Ministry, which
is
effectively the political executive
of the state, being convened
as
an entity, either
for
business
or
pleasure,
is probably neith‘cr an idea nor a practice known to the modern constitu-
tion, though some at least of the much smaller ministries
of
the late nine-
teenth century dined together before each parliamentary session
was
due
to
begin, in ordcr
to
hear what
was
to be in the Queen’s Speech.
Despite the Ministry’s lack of formal collective activity, however, knowledge
about
the
composition and structure of this wide ranging group
of
political
office holders
is
not unimportant for an understanding of the development
PUBLIC
ADYINISTRATlON
and character of the British system of government.
Through electoral accidents, ministerial posts may be occupied by
persons who have no seats in either House of Parliament, but such situations
are regarded usually
as
strictly temporary: normalcy must
be
restored
quite quickly.
If
an
MP
holding ministerial office loses his seat, fails to find
another and is not offered
-
or refuses
-
a
peerage, his tenure ofa ministerial
post will have to be relinquished. There have been a few exceptions in
untypical war-time conditions, but the only office recognized
as
being
of
ministerial rank which has been held for significant periods
by
non-
parliamentarians since the early
1920’s
is
that of Solicitor General for
Scotland. Presumably this particular case is explained by the very small
size of the Scottish Bar and cither the reluctance of its members to seek
election or the reluctance
of
constituencies to accept them as candidates
for parliamentary seats.’
Despite the apparent clarity of current constitutional practice, it is
not possible to produce a simple, fool-proof formula whereby offices
can be categorized unequivocally as ministerial or non-ministerial. The
long history of the legislation governing the eligibility of holders of offices
of profit from or under the Crown to sit in the Commons demonstrates
the difficulties, and the present legislation is based on the pragmatic notion
of listing the individual offices which are compatible with being an
MP,
and making the holders of all other offices ineligible.2 In itself, though,
receipt of salary
is
not a safe guide: two senior posts may be held simul-
taneously, one without having any emoluments attached
to
it; unpaid
Government Whips holding Junior Lordships of the Treasury fall within
the ministerial ranks. Parliamentary Private Secretaries, however, who
are unpaid, though increasingly looked upon
as
being bound closely to
the Government-of-the-day, are not regarded as ministers. On the other
hand, an unpaid post, always filled
by
an
MP,
that of Second Church
Estates Commissioner (and previously the Parliamentary Charity Com-
missioner and the Parliamentary Forestry Commissioner) is listed with
the Ministry. From the non-parliamentary standpoint there
is
always
a very small number of people who are neither Parliamentarians nor
civil servants who are appointed, especially
by
Prime Ministers, for
the lifetime or part of the lifetime of
a
Government, to posts in which
they may on occasion be very influential at the centres of power. Any
such person would respond positively to Gladstone’s ‘test of a political
officer’, namely ‘that he comes in and goes out with the G~vernment’,~ but
no such appointee
has
been considered
as
having ministerial status.
What historians will be able to say in this context with confidence is
that during the second and third quarters of the twentieth century the
Government-of-the-day comprised at any one time a group of politically
appointed officials called ministers, all but one of whom had to have
a
seat in either the Lords or the Commons. The ministerial group could
only be defined unequivocally by listing the individual offices which
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