Cabinet Manual (United Kingdom)

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v t e

The Cabinet Manual is a government document in the

members of Cabinet, other ministers and civil servants

in the execution of government business, but also serves to consolidate many of the previously unwritten constitutional conventions through which the British government operates.

The writing of the manual was originally initiated by Gordon Brown as part of his broader plan to establish a written constitution for the UK.^[1] However, in 2011 the House of Lords Constitution Committee stated that the document was "not the first step to a written constitution" as it only describes the existing rules and does not "set existing practice in stone".^[2] The manual does not need to be formally approved by Parliament and can be modified at any time by the Cabinet Secretary.^[3]

History

The United Kingdom has no single constitutional document; instead, much of the British constitution is embodied in documents, within statutes, court judgments, works of authority and treaties, which is sometimes described as an uncodified or "unwritten" constitution.^[4] The UK constitution also has several unwritten sources in the form of constitutional conventions.

In February 2010 during a speech to the

Public Administration Select Committee. Following recommendations by the Parliamentary Committees, a finalised version was published in October 2011 with forewords by David Cameron

and Sir Gus O'Donnell.

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Cabinet Manual

"Cabinet Manual" (PDF). gov.uk (pdf). Cabinet Office. Retrieved 2015-04-27.
"Cabinet Manual". gov.uk. Cabinet Office. 14 December 2010. Retrieved 2015-04-27.

References

^ ^a ^b "A new Magna Carta?". parliament.uk. 10 July 2014. Retrieved 2015-04-27.
^ "Cabinet manual not 'first step' to written constitution". BBC News. 2011-03-07. Retrieved 2015-04-27.
^ "The Cabinet Manual is constitutionally problematic because it expresses only the Executive's views". 19 February 2014.
^ H Barnett, Constitutional and Administrative Law (5th edn Cavendish 2005) 9, "A written constitution is one contained within a single document or a [finite] series of documents, with or without amendments"
^ "The Cabinet Manual". parliament.uk. 7 March 2011. Retrieved 2015-04-27.

History

See also

External links

References