Cabinet Office and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster – in the House of Commons at 12:00 am on 8 February 2017.
Jo Churchill
Conservative, Bury St Edmunds
12:00,
8 February 2017
What steps his Department is taking to use digital technologies to improve public services.
Ben Gummer
The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
We are committed to improving public services through technology to transform the relationship between citizen and state. We are doing so through the use of tools such as Verify.
Jo Churchill
Conservative, Bury St Edmunds
I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. Will he reassure the House that the Government are doing everything they can to ensure that people can access public services online, particularly hard-to-reach groups such as those in my rural Constituency of Bury St Edmunds?
Ben Gummer
The Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office
The Government Digital Service has a specific programme to ensure that there is full access to Government digital services for all groups. Of course, by ensuring that we have good broadband connections in constituencies such as my hon. Friend’s we will enable people to access those services online in rural areas.
The Chancellor - also known as "Chancellor of the Exchequer" is responsible as a Minister for the treasury, and for the country's economy. For Example, the Chancellor set taxes and tax rates. The Chancellor is the only MP allowed to drink Alcohol in the House of Commons; s/he is permitted an alcoholic drink while delivering the budget.
The cabinet is the group of twenty or so (and no more than 22) senior government ministers who are responsible for running the departments of state and deciding government policy.
It is chaired by the prime minister.
The cabinet is bound by collective responsibility, which means that all its members must abide by and defend the decisions it takes, despite any private doubts that they might have.
Cabinet ministers are appointed by the prime minister and chosen from MPs or peers of the governing party.
However, during periods of national emergency, or when no single party gains a large enough majority to govern alone, coalition governments have been formed with cabinets containing members from more than one political party.
War cabinets have sometimes been formed with a much smaller membership than the full cabinet.
From time to time the prime minister will reorganise the cabinet in order to bring in new members, or to move existing members around. This reorganisation is known as a cabinet re-shuffle.
The cabinet normally meets once a week in the cabinet room at Downing Street.
In a general election, each Constituency chooses an MP to represent them. MPs have a responsibility to represnt the views of the Constituency in the House of Commons. There are 650 Constituencies, and thus 650 MPs. A citizen of a Constituency is known as a Constituent
