Catalogue description Cabinet Office: Questions of Procedure, Prime Ministers' Memoranda to Ministers (C(P) and C(PR) file series)

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Details of CAB 171
Reference: CAB 171
Title: Cabinet Office: Questions of Procedure, Prime Ministers' Memoranda to Ministers (C(P) and C(PR) file series)
Description:

This series contains Cabinet procedure papers. They give guidance to Ministers on questions of procedure by listing rules and precedents.

An unreferenced document published in 1992 as part of the Open Government Initiative is also included.
Date: 1966-1992
Arrangement:

Chronological
Separated material:

Missing at transfer: Papers 1-5, C(P) Series,1966; Papers 2-3, C(PR) Series, 1973
Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Former reference in its original department: C(P) and C(PR) file series
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Creator:

Cabinet Office, 1916-
Physical description: 20 file(s)
Access conditions: Subject to 30 year closure
Immediate source of acquisition:

From 1997 Cabinet Office
Selection and destruction information: Editions of Questions of Procedure more than 30 years old are open in CAB 129, as they were produced as Cabinet memoranda. From 1966 to 1987 the editions were produced by the Cabinet Office Committee Section, not as Cabinet memoranda. Other procedural memoranda are expected to accrue to the series in due course.
Accruals: Series is accruing
Administrative / biographical background:

A draft of suggested procedures and standards for ministers and for the conduct of ministerial, especially Cabinet, business, was submitted to incoming prime minister Clement Attlee by the Cabinet Secretary in 1945. It was approved by the prime minister and issued to ministers as guidance. Subsequently, each new incoming prime minister reissued the document, with any desired changes.

Prime minister John Major gave instructions that the edition issued in 1996 over his name was to be published.

In slightly different form and under the new title of the Ministerial Code, it is now published on the Cabinet Office website.

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