Cabinet committee

Cabinet committees are established by the prime minister to enable the cabinet to deal more efficiently with the large volume of government business. All cabinet committees are chaired by the prime minister or a senior cabinet minister and will have a number of cabinet ministers as members. Some are permanent committees while others are set up to deal with particular issues as they arise. Cabinet committees carry out the bulk of cabinet work and the decisions they take have the authority of full cabinet. If a committee cannot agree on an issue it will be sent to the full cabinet for a final decision. Some cabinet committees have sub-committees that do not usually taking final decisions on policy, but can enable important discussion of those issues which range across government departments.

contributed by user Tom Loosemore