Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in the context of "Minister for the Cabinet Office"

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 1874 – 24 January 1965) was a British statesman, military officer, and writer who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 (during the Second World War) and again from 1951 to 1955. For some 62 of the years between 1900 and 1964, he was a Member of Parliament (MP) and represented a total of five constituencies over that time. Ideologically an adherent to economic liberalism and imperialism, he was for most of his career a member of the Conservative Party, which he led from 1940 to 1955. He was a member of the Liberal Party from 1904 to 1924.

Of mixed English and American parentage, Churchill was born in Oxfordshire into the wealthy, aristocratic Spencer family. He joined the British Army in 1895 and saw action in British India, the Mahdist War and the Second Boer War, gaining fame as a war correspondent and writing books about his campaigns. Elected a Conservative MP in 1900, he defected to the Liberals in 1904. In H. H. Asquith's Liberal government, Churchill was president of the Board of Trade and later Home Secretary, championing prison reform and workers' social security. As First Lord of the Admiralty before and during the First World War he oversaw the disastrous naval attack on the Dardanelles (a prelude to the Gallipoli campaign) and was demoted to Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He resigned in November 1915 and joined the Royal Scots Fusiliers on the Western Front for six months. In 1917, he returned to government under David Lloyd George and served successively as Minister of Munitions, Secretary of State for War, Secretary of State for Air, and Secretary of State for the Colonies, overseeing the Anglo-Irish Treaty and British foreign policy in the Middle East. After two years out of Parliament, he was Chancellor of the Exchequer in Stanley Baldwin's Conservative government, returning sterling in 1925 to the gold standard, depressing the UK economy.

The leader of the House of Lords is a member of the Cabinet of the United Kingdom who is responsible for arranging government business in the House of Lords. ("Government" here means the controlling faction of the parliament, headed by the Prime Minister.) The post is also the leader of the governing party in the House of Lords who acts as the government party chairperson in the house. The role is always held in combination with a formal Cabinet position, usually one of the sinecure offices of Lord President of the Council, Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal or Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Unless the Leader is also a departmental minister, being Leader constitutes the bulk of their government responsibilities, but it has never been an independent salaried office. The Office of the Leader of the House of Lords is a ministerial department.

Though the leader of the House is a member of the cabinet and remains a partisan figure, the leader also has responsibilities to the House as a whole. In contrast to the House of Commons, where proceedings are controlled by the speaker, proceedings in the Lords are controlled by peers themselves, under the rules set out in the Standing Orders. The leader of the House has the responsibility of reminding the House of these rules and facilitating the Lords' self-regulation, though any member may draw attention to breaches of order or failure to observe customs. The Leader is often called upon to advise on procedures and points of order and is required to determine the order of speakers on Supplementary Questions, subject to the wishes of the House. However, like the Lord Speaker, the Leader of the House has no power to rule on points of order or to intervene during an inappropriate speech.

The Dissolution and Calling of Parliament Act 2022 (c. 11) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that repealed the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 and reinstated the prior constitutional situation, by reviving the power of the monarch to dissolve and summon parliament. As the monarch exercises this power at the request of the prime minister, this restored the power of the prime minister to have a general election called at a time chosen by the prime minister.

It was originally drafted as the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 (Repeal) Bill. Announced formally in the 2021 State Opening of Parliament, it received its first reading on 12 May 2021 and received Royal Assent on 24 March 2022. It was introduced by Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Michael Gove.

Edward Samuel Miliband (born 24 December 1969) is a British politician who has served as Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero since July 2024. He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Doncaster North since 2005. Miliband was Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 2010 to 2015. Alongside his brother, David Miliband, he served in the Cabinet from 2007 to 2010 under Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Miliband was born in the Fitzrovia district of Central London to Marion Kozak and Ralph Miliband, Polish Jewish immigrants. His father was a Marxist intellectual and native of Brussels who fled Belgium during the Second World War. He graduated from Corpus Christi College, Oxford and later from the London School of Economics. Miliband became first a television journalist, then a Labour Party researcher and a visiting scholar at Harvard University, before rising to become one of Chancellor Gordon Brown's confidants and chairman of HM Treasury's Council of Economic Advisers. He was elected to the House of Commons in 2005 and Prime Minister Tony Blair made him Minister for the Third Sector in May 2006. When Brown became Prime Minister in 2007, he appointed Miliband Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Miliband was subsequently promoted to the new post of Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, a position he held from 2008 to 2010.

A sinecure (/ˈsɪnɪkjʊər/ or /ˈsaɪnɪkjʊər/; from the Latin sine, 'without', and cura, 'care') is a position with a salary or otherwise generating income that requires or involves little or no responsibility, labour, or active service. The term originated in the medieval church, where it signified a post without any responsibility for the "cure [care] of souls", the regular liturgical and pastoral functions of a cleric, but came to be applied to any post, secular or ecclesiastical, that involved little or no actual work. Sinecures have historically provided a potent tool for governments or monarchs to distribute patronage, while recipients are able to store up titles and easy salaries.

A sinecure can also be given to an individual whose primary job is in another office, but requires a sinecure title to perform that job. For example, the Government House Leader in Canada is often given a sinecure ministry position so that they may become a member of the Cabinet. Similar examples are the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, whose holders are ex officio members of the Privy Council and may therefore be admitted to the Cabinet of the United Kingdom (which is formally the executive committee of the Privy Council). The minister without portfolio is a frequent example of this sinecure, often employed to give cabinet-level positions to enough members of all partners in a coalition government. Other sinecures operate as legal fictions, such as the British office of Crown Steward and Bailiff of the Chiltern Hundreds, used as a legal excuse for resigning from Parliament.

In the United Kingdom, a minister without portfolio is often a cabinet position, or often attends cabinet. The role is sometimes used to enable the chairman of the governing party, contemporarily either the chairman of the Conservative Party or the chair of the Labour Party, to attend cabinet meetings. (If so, they hold the title of "Party chairman".) The sinecure positions of Lord Privy Seal, Paymaster General, and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster which have few responsibilities and have a higher rank in the order of precedence than minister without portfolio can also be used to similar effect. Anna Turley was appointed as minister without portfolio, replacing Ellie Reeves, in the 2025 British cabinet reshuffle.

The corresponding shadow minister is the Shadow Minister without Portfolio.

The shadow chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is a position in the British Shadow Cabinet, appointed by the leader of the Opposition. The post involves holding to account the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who has control over the estates and rents of the Duchy of Lancaster. The position was re-established by Keir Starmer in April 2020, replacing the position of shadow lord president of the council last held by Jon Trickett, which was split from shadow leader of the House of Commons by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.