Office that assists the prime minister and other ministers with policy decisions.
A Guide to Cabinet Office
A cabinet office is a government entity conceived of and executed in the U.K. which is charged with supporting the Prime Minister and his Cabinet. It also oversees the public service. It was initiated during the First World War and functions so as to deliver on policy decisions as smoothly and as accountably as possible. Let’s consider its function in more detail.
Of the office’s three core responsibilities, the first is to support the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. (The staff of the PM’s office is part of the cabinet office, but most of its two thousand employees work in Whitehall.) This means shaping, adopting, and implementing the Prime Minister’s policy objectives, and disseminating them throughout the public service.
The second responsibility is to support the Cabinet and its objectives, which involves a close presence in cabinet meetings to regulate and direct the flow of discussion. (In fact, its original role was to moderate and improve the quality of interaction for the Cabinet, and its office grew from there.) It has deep influence on the agendas and goals of the Cabinet, and sees them through to implementation.
The other core duty of the Cabinet Office is to strengthen the public service and assure its smooth functioning. It streamlines the operations of the sector, has oversight power on its methods, and has a hand in regulating fraud and corruption. The public service is fully under its purview, and the office is charged with making sure it’s running at peak efficiency.
The Cabinet Office tends to change with the governments and priorities of those governments, so it can end up shouldering responsibility for new policy measures. As time has passed over the last century, it has absorbed functions that didn’t fit with other departments, including coordinating intelligence operations. In 1981, for example, the ceremonial branch was transferred to the Cabinet Office, meaning that matters of state etiquette and diplomacy are supported by the office as well. The same can be said for the Historical Section, which debates and advocates official government histories of the nation and its global dealings.
The current Cabinet Office is headed by the Rt. Hon Prime Minister David Cameron, with the Rt. Hon Nick Clegg serving as Deputy and the Rt. Hon Francis Maude serving as Minister of the Cabinet Office.
