Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:01 pm on 7 June 2017.
Mark Drakeford
Labour
2:01,
7 June 2017
I thank the Member for her question. As I just mentioned, prior to the local government elections, the Welsh Government ran a number of projects as part of the diversity in democracy programme. We now intend to undertake a full evaluation of the programme, looking at the people who participated in it and their success in elections, with a view to learning from it and taking the diversity agenda further forward.
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.
