The Cabinet Manual is an important guide to the workings of the UK’s uncodified constitution, providing an accessible roadmap for ministers, officials and the public. But the document has not been updated since its publication in 2011, despite some significant constitutional changes taking place. In this post, Lisa James argues that updating the Manual should be a government priority. 

The Cabinet Manual describes the ‘laws, conventions and rules on the operation of government’. Published in 2011, the document brought together for the first time material on the workings of the UK’s uncodified constitution, providing an accessible guide to the roles and responsibilities of the government, and its relationship with other constitutional actors. 

Despite its importance, the Manual has not been updated since its publication, and does not reflect constitutional changes that have taken place since it was first drafted. In recent years, work has taken place on an updated draft – but following the 2024 general election, Cabinet Office representatives have suggested that this work is no longer a priority. 

This post argues that allowing the Manual to lapse into the status of a ‘historical reference document’, as Cabinet Secretary Chris Wormald recently put it, would be a mistake. The post outlines the purpose and history of the Cabinet Manual, the need to update it, and what action the government could usefully take to update the Manual now, and to ensure that the new version does not become outdated in the future. 

The Cabinet Manual: purpose and history 

First developed under Gordon Brown’s government, and published by the coalition, the Cabinet Manual was intended to provide ministers and officials with a guide to the workings of the constitution. Rather than being a vehicle to introduce reforms, it collected together existing rules, practices and conventions in a single place. It also sought to avoid detailed operational prescription, focusing instead on relatively high-level principle and practice. 

Its topic coverage is broad: the Manual includes a wide variety of information relating to the organisation and functioning of Cabinet government, as well as describing the role of the monarchy (including the operation of prerogative powers), and the principles underlying elections and government formation. It also details the executive’s relationships with various other constitutional actors – notably parliament, the courts, and the devolved administrations. In an early example of its value, a draft of its section on elections and government formation was published in time to inform the conduct of the coalition negotiations following the 2010 election. The full text was welcomed by the chair of the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee (as well as by the Constitution Unit); more recently, three current or former Cabinet Secretaries praised its usefulness as a ‘Highway Code’ for the constitution. 

The Cabinet Manual has a particularly important role to play in the context of the UK’s uncodified constitution. All constitutions rest on mutually shared expectations about the rights and responsibilities of different actors, taking the form of standards and conventions – but the UK’s ‘political’ (rather than ‘legal’) constitution is often said to be particularly reliant upon them. The Cabinet Manual forms part of this political constitution; while there are no enforcement mechanisms or sanctions associated with it, it lays out clear, officially-endorsed norms and expectations to guide government behaviour – and against which that government’s actions can be evaluated.  

The Cabinet Manual also makes a significant contribution to the transparency of the UK’s constitutional arrangements. Constitutional rules, standards, practices and conventions can take a wide range of forms. Statutes and codes of conduct are relatively easy to locate. But articulations of established practices and conventions – or new commitments – can be found in a wide range of other places. These might include, for example, written statements, ministerial correspondence, responses to select committee reports, or Cabinet Office guidance. Some of the most fundamental conventions underpinning the UK constitution were not written down at all until their inclusion in the Cabinet Manual – for example, that the person most likely to be able to command the confidence of the House of Commons should be appointed Prime Minister. There are clear benefits to a document that draws these rules and conventions together in a single place. The most obvious beneficiaries are ministers and officials, but the Manual has wider value as an accessible public-facing explanation of how key aspects of the constitution function.  

Updating the Cabinet Manual 

When the Cabinet Manual was published, it was envisaged as a first edition which would need regular updating. The foreword, written by then Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell, noted that: 

The content of the Cabinet Manual is not static, and the passage of new legislation, the evolution of conventions or changes to the internal procedures of government will mean that the practices and processes it describes will evolve over time. If the Cabinet Manual is to continue to play a useful role as a guide to the operations and procedures of government, it will need to be updated periodically to reflect such developments. 

However, no such updating has taken place. Since the Cabinet Manual’s publication, the UK has left the European Union, the Supreme Court has ruled in two major court cases on the limits of prerogative powers, the Fixed-term Parliaments Act has been first passed and then repealed, and a new intergovernmental relations framework has been introduced. Many of the other documents the Manual draws on and links to have been updated, leaving it referring to outdated versions. By way of contrast, the New Zealand Cabinet Manual – which provided inspiration for the UK document – has been updated six times since it was first issued in 1979. The May government promised in 2018 to update the Cabinet Manual following the UK’s departure from the EU, but collapsed the following year. 

In 2021, the House of Lords Constitution Committee marked the Manual’s 10-year anniversary with an inquiry into its updating. This concluded that the Manual still had a valuable role to play, but warned that the document risked becoming ‘moribund’ and misleading if it was not updated soon. 

The Johnson government duly committed to publishing a new edition of the Manual by the end of the 2019–24 parliament. A similar pledge followed under the Sunak government, and extensive work took place on a new draft, which progressed far enough for experts to be invited to comment on redrafted chapters. But the revision was not completed in time for the 2024 general election.  

Since that general election, the Commons Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) has pressed both Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden and Cabinet Secretary Chris Wormald on their plans to update the Cabinet Manual. Both have given discouraging answers; though McFadden confirmed that ‘the Cabinet Manual will be updated at some point’, both indicated that such updating is not a government priority. 

But the reasons to update the Manual remain as pressing now as in 2021. The Constitution Committee’s conclusions reflected the fact that, while an accurate Manual can promote clarity, transparency and accountability, an outdated document is not simply less useful, but risks actively damaging all these things. Wider political developments over the past few years also point to the value an updated Manual can offer. The increasing party fragmentation of the electorate might provide particular urgency for a fresh look at the section on government formation, just as it did in 2010. And the global political context – in which political conventions and cultures are coming under growing threat in a range of countries – provides a sharp lesson in the importance of clarifying and reinforcing constitutional norms and standards. 

What should be done? 

The most urgent task is to produce an updated version of the Manual. If possible, this should be done without letting it grow in length, to maintain its focus on principle. As in the existing edition, more detailed material can be signposted and linked to, without needing to be reproduced in full. And, also as in 2010, a wide consultation process on a draft text would allow parliamentary committees and external experts to help identify gaps, inconsistencies or errors. Much of the necessary work has already been done, and the process could be picked up where it left off in the last parliament. 

But it would also be wise for the government to take a longer-term view, and establish a process for updating the Manual that will prevent this situation from arising in the future. Over the longer term, revision of the Manual ought to become a routine occurrence, so that the document retains its accuracy and its value. This type of approach has long been used successfully for similar documents; notably, the Ministerial Code is by convention reissued when a new Prime Minister takes office. 

Both the Constitution Committee and a report by the Institute for Government and Bennett Institute recommended that an equivalent process could see the Cabinet Manual updated at the start of each parliament, with interim updates issued in the case of major changes. Such a process could guarantee that the Manual continues to ‘bring about greater transparency about the mechanisms of government’, rather than obscuring them. 

About the author

Lisa James is a Senior Research Fellow at the Constitution Unit. 

Featured image: Prime Minister Keir Starmer hosts Cabinet (CC BY 2.0) by UK Prime Minister.