– in the Scottish Parliament at on 1 September 2020.
Kenneth Macintosh
Labour
The next item of consideration is legislative consent motion S5M-22591, on the Agriculture Bill, which is United Kingdom legislation. I call Graeme Dey to move the motion on behalf of the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Economy and Tourism, Fergus Ewing.
Motion moved,
That the Parliament agrees that the provisions related to food security, organic products, animal identification and traceability, fertilisers and the red meat levy in the Agriculture Bill, introduced into the House of Commons on 16 January 2020, so far as these matters fall within the legislative competence of the Scottish Parliament and alter the executive competence of the Scottish Ministers, should be considered by the UK Parliament.—[
Graeme Dey
]
The House of Commons is one of the houses of parliament. Here, elected MPs (elected by the "commons", i.e. the people) debate. In modern times, nearly all power resides in this house. In the commons are 650 MPs, as well as a speaker and three deputy speakers.
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.
