Duh Cow’s question on the American Secretary of the Interior let me on a mental wild goose chase, that ended up with this question:
Most of the members of the British Cabinet (and the department heads not in the Cabinet) are Ministers – Minister of Labour, Minister of Housing, etc.
There are a couple of historical oddities like the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the First Lord of the Admiralty.
But the guys who head up Foreign Affairs, Home Department, the Army, the Air Force, and Commonwealth Affairs (possible one or two others) are Secretaries of State for ___ (Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs, War, Air, etc.)
Why do they have a different title? Does it signify anything different beyond some historical tradition? Do they have any different rights or powers than a Minister?
This glossary gives some explanation of the various titles:
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending.
Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called ‘Secretary of State’ but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
Before the British Cabinet emerged as a collective body, there were various high officials who advised the king. One of these was the Secretary of State. The US inherited the term from the UK.
There was originally just one Secretary of State, but as his job got bigger and bigger it was split into two – there was a Secretary of State for the Northern Department, and a Secretary of State for the Southern Department. This wasn’t a very logical arrangement - home affairs were divided between the two officials, as were foreign affairs – so before too long they redrew the dividing line, apppointing a Secretary of State for the Home Deparement, and a Secretary of State for the Foreign Department. Both of these offices have since been redivided several times, with the result that there are now quite a number of Secretaries of State, each heading a department devoted to some topic which used to be the concern of the Secretary of State when he was a single official.
In general, in the UK a “Secretary of State” is the political head of a major government department (other than the Treasury, since finance was never the concern of the Secretary of State). “Ministers” are usually assistants or deputies to a Secretary of State. For example, the Foreign Office is headed by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, but also has a Minister of State for Trade, a Minister of State for European Affairs, a Minister of State for Middle Eastern Affairs and two Parliamentary Under-Secretaries (who are also political figures).
Secretaries of State and Ministers (and their associated personal staffs) are hired and fired at will, on the advice of the Prime Minister. They only amount to, at most, a couple of dozen people in each department – often less. Each department also has a career civil servant to head it up, known as the “Permanent Secretary”. He shouldn’t be confused with the Secretary of State; he is a permanent official, who remains with the department until he retires or is posted to another department.
The technical distinction is that those government orders requiring the Queen’s signature can only be submitted to her by a secretary of state or by one of the Treasury commissioners (who, of course, include the prime minister and the chancellor of the Exchequer). It therefore makes things simpler if the senior minister - but only the most senior one - in most departments has the rank of a secretary of state. Not that submitting orders to her for her signature is now anything other than a formality.