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Lord President of the Council | |
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Privy Council of the United Kingdom Privy Council Office | |
Style | The Right Honourable |
Type | Great Officer of State |
Appointer | The Sovereign on advice of the Prime Minister |
Term length | At His Majesty's pleasure |
Formation | 1530 |
First holder | The 1st Duke of Suffolk |
Salary | £159,038 per annum (2022) [1] (including £86,584 MP salary) [2] |
Website | privycouncil |
This article is part of a series on |
Politics of the United Kingdom |
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United Kingdomportal |
The Lord President of the Council is the presiding officer of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom and the fourth of the Great Officers of State, ranking below the Lord High Treasurer but above the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal. The Lord President usually attends and is responsible for chairing the meetings of the Privy Council, presenting business for the approval of the Sovereign. In the modern era, the incumbent is by convention always a member of one of the houses of Parliament, and the office is normally a Cabinet position.
The Privy Council meets once a month, wherever the sovereign may be residing at the time, to give formal approval to Orders in Council. [3] Only a few privy counsellors need attend such meetings, and only when invited to do so at the government's request. As the duties of the Lord President are not onerous, the post has often been given to a government minister whose responsibilities are not department-specific. In recent years it has been most typical for the Lord President also to serve as Leader of the House of Commons or Leader of the House of Lords. The Lord President has no role in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
In the history of British government, the President of the Council is a relatively recent creation. The first certain appointment to the office being that of the Duke of Suffolk in 1529. [4] Although there is a reference to Edmund Dudley serving as 'president of the council' in 1497, it was only in 1529 that the role was given the style and precedence of a Great Officer of State by act of Parliament (21 Hen. 8. c. 20). [5] Prior to 1679 there were several periods in which the office was left vacant.
In the 19th century, the Lord President was generally the cabinet member responsible for the education system, amongst his other duties. This role was gradually scaled back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries but remnants of it remain, such as the oversight of the governance of various universities.
During times of National or coalition government the office of Lord President has sometimes been held by the leader of a minority party (e.g. Baldwin 1931–1935, MacDonald 1935–1937, Attlee 1943–1945, Clegg 2010–2015). It has been suggested that the office has been intermittently used for Prime Ministerial deputies in the past.[ clarification needed ] [6] [7]
A particularly vital role was played by the Lord President of the Council during the Second World War. The Lord President served as chairman of the Lord President's Committee. This committee acted as a central clearing house which dealt with the country's economic problems. This was vital to the smooth running of the British war economy and consequently the entire British war effort.
Winston Churchill, clearly believing that this wartime co-ordinating role was beneficial, introduced a similar but expanded system in the first few years of his post-war premiership. [8] The so-called 'overlord ministers' included Frederick Leathers as Secretary of State for the Co-ordination of Transport, Fuel and Power and Lord Woolton as Lord President. Woolton's job was to co-ordinate the then separate ministries of agriculture and food. [9] The historian Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield quotes a PhD thesis by Michael Kandiah saying that Woolton was "arguably the most successful of the Overlords" partly because his ministries were quite closely related; indeed, they were merged in 1955 as the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. [10]
On several occasions since 1954, non-British Ministers have served briefly as acting Lords President of the Council, solely to preside over a meeting of the Privy Council held in a Commonwealth realm. [11] [12] [13] Examples of this practice are the meetings in New Zealand in 1990 and 1995, when Geoffrey Palmer and James Bolger respectively were acting Lords President.
Andrea Leadsom's appointment in June 2017 was the first in some time where the post holder was not a full Cabinet member. [14]
"The Privy Council is the mechanism through which interdepartmental agreement is reached on those items of Government business which, for historical or other reasons, fall to Ministers as Privy Counsellors rather than as Departmental Ministers." [15]
The routine functions of the lord president are as follows:
In addition to his or her routine functions, the lord president also serves as the visitor for several English universities, including: [30]
Lord President | Term of office | ||
---|---|---|---|
Charles Brandon 1st Duke of Suffolk | 1530 | 14 August 1545 | |
William Paulet 1st Marquess of Winchester | January 1546 | February 1550 | |
John Dudley 1st Duke of Northumberland | February 1550 | July 1553 | |
Henry Montagu 1st Earl of Manchester | September 1621 | July 1628 | |
James Ley 1st Earl of Marlborough | July 1628 | 14 December 1628 | |
Edward Conway 1st Viscount Conway | 14 December 1628 | 3 January 1631 | |
Anthony Ashley-Cooper 1st Earl of Shaftesbury | 21 April 1679 | 15 October 1679 | |
John Robartes 1st Earl of Radnor | 24 October 1679 | 24 August 1684 | |
Laurence Hyde 1st Earl of Rochester | 24 August 1684 | 18 February 1685 | |
George Savile 1st Marquess of Halifax | 18 February 1685 | 4 December 1685 | |
Robert Spencer 2nd Earl of Sunderland | 4 December 1685 | October 1688 | |
Richard Graham 1st Viscount Preston | October 1688 | December 1688 | |
Thomas Osborne 1st Duke of Leeds [nb 1] | 14 February 1689 | 18 May 1699 | |
Thomas Herbert 8th Earl of Pembroke | 18 May 1699 | 29 January 1702 | |
Charles Seymour 6th Duke of Somerset | 29 January 1702 | 13 July 1702 |
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The body convenes, on average, about once a month and its meetings – known as councils – are presided over by The Queen.
... there has been constitutional work done, there have been acts of State: ... meetings of the Privy Council, an organ of the Constitution older than Parliament itself, for wherever the Sovereign is, and three Privy Counsellors are present, there may be meetings of the Council and Orders passed. So, during this tour there have been sessions of the Privy Council in Australia, in New Zealand and in Ceylon, with their own local Privy Council members – members of the one single Imperial Privy Council, but their own local members.
The Queen has in fact regularly presided over meetings of the Privy Council in New Zealand, since her first in 1954. That was the first held by the Sovereign outside the United Kingdom, although in 1920 Edward Prince of Wales held a Council in Wellington to swear in the Earl of Liverpool as Governor-General.
The Queen held a meeting of the Privy Council [on 13 January 1954] at the 'Court at Government House at Wellington' with her New Zealand prime minister as 'acting Lord President' of the council. The deputy prime minister, Keith Holyoake, 'secured for himself a place in constitutional history by becoming the first member to be sworn of Her Majesty's Council outside the United Kingdom'.