ABSTRACT
The Guide to Cabinet and Cabinet Committee Business advises: It is difficult to give comprehensive rules about which policies require clearance. It is important to uphold the system of collective decision-making; but process for process’ sake needs to be avoided. Politics is as much about instinct and prejudice as about logic and analysis. Ministers exist to inject this element into the rational but rather colourless decision-making of Whitehall. When they are appointed to Cabinet Committees, junior Cabinet ministers get an opportunity to make their mark, particularly as the importance of the Cabinet as a decision-making body has declined. One bizarre impact of the assumption that Cabinet committees were the proper locus for decision-making was that, when they considered issues affecting many departments, or of high political sensitivity, sometimes up to four-fifths of the Cabinet might attend. The 2010–15 Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition saw a significant reversion to traditional and systematic processes of decision-making.
