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Government Ministers

All Government Departments are run by Ministers who are either Members of the House of Commons or Members of the House of Lords. We have three classes of Minister:

• Secretary of State - This is usually the head of a Department.
• Minister of State - This is a middle-ranking minister.
• Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State - This is the most junior class of minister.

The Prime Minster and all the Secretaries of State together comprise an executive body of government called the Cabinet. The Cabinet meets usually once a week on Tuesday morning. Cabinet meetings are confidential and all members are bound by any decision that it takes in a practice called collective responsibility. An extensive system of Cabinet Committees considers matters either before they go to Cabinet or (more usually) instead of them going to Cabinet.

Although all Ministers are appointed by the Prime Minster and report to him, ultimately all Ministers are accountable to Parliament:

• About once a month, they have to face questions in the House of Commons about the work of the Department.
• Each government department has a special committee of the House of Commons which watches the work of that Department.
• Any government initiative or important statement concerning a Department must be the subject of an appearance in the House of Commons by a minister from that Department.

The civil service

Each Secretary of State is able to appoint a couple of political advisers – formally known as Special Advisers – to serve him or her. I was a Special Adviser to Merlyn Rees in the Northern Ireland Office from 1974-1976 and in the Home Office from 1976-1978, while my son Richard was a Special Adviser to Ruth Kelly in the Department for Education & Skills in 2005 and a Special Adviser to Douglas Alexander at the Department for International Development in 2009-2010.

But Special Advisers are simply advisers. They have no line management responsibilities in respect of the staff of the Department. Besides these tiny number of Special Advisers, Government Departments are run by civil servants who are recruited in a totally open manner and serve governments of any political parties. The independence and professionalism of the British civil service are fundamental features of the British political system. My son Richard once worked as a civil servant in what was then the Department of Trade & Industry and my half-brother Chris was an official in the Treasury for five years.