Cabinet Office written statement – made at on 27 February 2020.
Michael Gove
Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
The Cabinet Office has sought a repayable cash advance from the Contingencies Fund of £82,663,000.
This routine requirement arises each year because the Cabinet Office receives a high proportion of its voted funding at Supplementary Estimate, and as a consequence may only draw the related cash from the Consolidated Fund after the Supply and Appropriation Act has received Royal Assent in March 2020.
The cash advance will pay for programmes which will generate Government-wide benefits or savings and are urgent in the public interest.
Parliamentary approval for additional resources of £53,885,000 and capital of £27,903,000 and cash of £875,000 will be sought in a Supplementary Estimate for the Cabinet Office. Pending that approval, urgent expenditure estimated at £82,663,000 will be met by repayable cash advances from the Contingencies Fund.
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.
