Who can request a dissolution of Parliament? (UK)

it takes a while for the new law to make it out to the colonies! :wink:

I am not actually joking, a complete set of Halsburys from 30+ years ago in mint condition, well that would earn very well.

I don’t think that follows from the passages quoted. Yes, the Queen would be expected to ignore a request from just some Cabinet ministers, but she would do so for rather different reasons.

The statement that, ‘The advice tender[e]d to the Crown by the Cabinet ought to be be unanimous’ leaves unspecified exactly what types of advice only the Cabinet can tender. It merely means that whatever advice it does tender has to be unanimous.

This is important because certain types of advice are reserved to the Prime Minister alone. So, for example, only the PM can advise on ministerial appointments. His or her Cabinet colleagues will, of course, have strong views on the subject and it would unwise for any PM to ignore them. But the Cabinet itself never discusses such matters. The right to ask for a dissolution is usually considered to fall into the same category. (I have a feeling however that in recent decades PMs have usually first informed the Cabinet as a matter of courtesy before heading off to the Palace. But that’s not the same as consulting them. Or obtaining their agreement.)

There are incidentally other types of advice that are tendered by individual ministers independent of the Cabinet and other ministers, including the Prime Minister. For example, most royal pardons in England are granted on the advice of the Home Secretary alone.

[nitpick]

Or, to be entirely accurate, both Houses are dissolved, which is why the peers all require new writs of summons to allow them to take their places in the new Parliament. It is just that it is the same peers who get summoned.

[/nitpick]

Well if you want to get pendantic, Parliament cannot get dissolved, since the Queen would bne dissolving herself.

A slight tangent: I recently learned that Cabinet ministers cannot leave British soil without permission of the Queen (which is, of course, routinely granted).

Pedantic, to bae doubly pedantic. “Pendantic” would be relating to something hanging as a pendant.

Actually, after granting a dissolution, she just takes a very hot bath! :wink:

To get even more serious and nitpicky, what is dissolved is technically “the Crown in Parliament,” i.e., “Her Majesty by and with the advice of her faithful Commons and the Lords Temporal and Spiritual,” a corporate entity consisting of three parts, all needed for legislation (except, by precedent, that necessary to fill a vacancy on the throne, which may be passed by Lords and Commons and assented to retroactively by the monarch so chosen). She will re-establish it after the election by issuing writs of summons to the Lords and to the winners of seats in the Commons.