Английская Википедия:First Secretary of State

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Шаблон:Short description Шаблон:Infobox official post Шаблон:Uk-gov-positions Шаблон:PoliticsUKFirst Secretary of State is an office that is sometimes held by a minister of the Crown in the Government of the United Kingdom. The office indicates seniority, including over all other secretaries of state. The office is not always in use, so there have sometimes been extended gaps between successive holders.

Dominic Raab most recently held the position between July 2019 and September 2021, making it vacant at the moment.

Constitutional position

Like the deputy prime minister, the first secretary enjoys no right of automatic succession to the office of Prime Minister. However, when Prime Minister Boris Johnson was moved to an intensive care unit on 6 April 2020, after contracting COVID-19, First Secretary Dominic Raab was asked "to deputise for him where necessary."

The office temporarily enjoyed some greater constitutional footing between when it was incorporated as a corporation sole in 2002 and having all of its remaining functions transferred in 2008. During most of this time, John Prescott was First Secretary.

History

In 1962, Rab Butler was the first person to be appointed to the office, in part to avoid earlier royal objections to the office of Deputy Prime Minister. The office gave Butler ministerial superiority over the rest of the Cabinet and indicated that he was second-in-command. Harold Wilson appointed three people to the office between 1964 and 1970, but it has been noted by Anthony Seldon et al. that the office may have caught on "more as an ego-massager than for functional reasons."

Later, Michael Heseltine and John Prescott held the office alongside being Deputy Prime Minister. The two offices have only existed concurrently with different holders in David Cameron's coalition government, wherein Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg was appointed Deputy Prime Minister while Conservative William Hague was First Secretary.

Responsibilities

The office is currently listed on the gov.uk website as bringing no additional responsibilities. However, Lord Norton says that there are two benefits to a prime minister in appointing a first secretary: firstly, it leaves a senior minister free to perform correlation and co-ordination and to chair committees and, secondly, it enables the prime minister to send a signal as to the status of the holder. Stephen Thornton and Jonathan Kirkup have said that "the Office of First Secretary of State is only as important as the person holding that office is perceived to be important", but in certain circumstances the office "...can assume acute importance and real power" and it may yet become an office of substance.

Timeline

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Define $today = 22/12/2024

DateFormat=dd/mm/yyyy Period = from:01/01/1960 till:01/01/2025 TimeAxis = orientation:horizontal ScaleMinor = unit:year increment:1 start:01/01/1960 ScaleMajor = unit:year increment:5 start:01/01/1960

Colors =

 id:con    value:rgb(0.094,0.525,0.8)       legend:Conservative
 id:lab    value:rgb(0.937,0.094,0.129) legend:Labour

Legend = columns:2 left:125 top:28 columnwidth:100

TextData =

 pos:(25,30) textcolor:black fontsize:M
 text:"Political parties:"

BarData =

 bar:Butler
 bar:Brown
 bar:Stewart
 bar:Castle
 bar:Heseltine
 bar:Prescott
 bar:Mandelson
 bar:Hague
 bar:Osborne
 bar:Green
 bar:Raab

PlotData=

 width:5 align:left fontsize:m shift:(5,-4) anchor:till

bar:Butler
from: 13/07/1962 till: 18/10/1963 color:con text:"Butler"
bar:Brown
from: 16/10/1964 till: 11/08/1966 color:lab text:"Brown"
bar:Stewart
from: 11/08/1966 till: 06/04/1968 color:lab text:"Stewart"
bar:Castle
from: 06/04/1968 till: 19/06/1970 color:lab text:"Castle"
bar:Heseltine
from: 20/07/1995 till: 02/05/1997 color:con text:"Heseltine"
bar:Prescott
from: 08/06/2001 till: 27/07/2007 color:lab text:"Prescott"
bar:Mandelson
from: 05/06/2009 till: 11/05/2010 color:lab text:"Mandelson"
bar:Hague
from: 12/05/2010 till: 08/05/2015 color:con text:"Hague"
bar:Osborne
from: 08/05/2015 till: 13/07/2016 color:con text:"Osborne"
bar:Green
from: 11/06/2017 till: 20/12/2017 color:con text:"Green"
bar:Raab
from: 24/07/2019 till: 15/09/2021 color:con text:"Raab"

</timeline>

See also

• Ministerial ranking - the "pecking order" or relative importance of senior ministers in the UK government.