War cabinet
Following dissatisfaction at the conduct of the Crimean War, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli proposed that the number of cabinet members never exceed 10 (he had 12 at the time).
In December 1916 it was proposed that Prime Minister H. H. Asquith should delegate decision-making to a small, three-man committee chaired by the Secretary of State for War, David Lloyd George.
The political crisis grew from this point until Asquith was forced to resign as Prime Minister; he was succeeded by Lloyd George who thereupon formed a small war cabinet.
Later members included: Unlike a normal peacetime cabinet, few of these men had departmental responsibilities – Bonar Law, and then Chamberlain, served as chancellors of the exchequer, but the rest had no specific portfolio.
The functioning of the war cabinet is best summed up by Lord Hutchison during a Parliamentary debate held on 14 March 1934.
[13][14] The origins of an Imperial War Cabinet date back to the beginning of Lloyd George's government, and the proper way of responding to peace offerings from Germany.
Goals were also established to strengthen imperial federation by upgrading the status of the Dominions and India to an equal footing with that of Britain when coordinating war strategy.
Unlike David Lloyd George's war cabinet, the members of this one were also heads of government departments.
In January 1940, after disagreements with the Chiefs of Staff, Hore-Belisha resigned from the National Government, refusing a move to the post of President of the Board of Trade.
It was originally the practice for the Chiefs of Staff to attend all military discussions of the Chamberlain war cabinet.
To overcome this, a Military Co-ordination Committee was set up, consisting of the three service ministers normally chaired by Chatfield.
When Churchill took over from Chatfield, whilst continuing to represent the Admiralty, this introduced additional problems, and did little to improve the pre-existing ones.
Chamberlain announced a further change in arrangements in the Norway Debate, but this (and the Military Co-ordination Committee) was overtaken by events, the Churchill war cabinet being run on rather different principles.
[22] As the war cabinet considered issues that pertained to a given branch of the service or government due input was obtained from the respective body.
[25] Thatcher chose not to include any representation of Her Majesty's Treasury on the advice of former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan (who had been British Minister Resident in the Mediterranean theatre for the second half of World War II), that the security and defence of the armed forces and the war effort should not be compromised for financial reasons.
