The Prime Minister will appoint the senior minister to run each department who will in turn agree with the Prime Minster the appointment of the junior ministers for that department and will have to agree to their being moved elsewhere.

The function of departments, together responsible for over six million public sector employees, is now mainly technocratic-managerial as they are required to operate as efficiently and effectively as possible within their legal framework.

The Prime Minister currently recommends the appointment of the Cabinet and all departmental ministers to the monarch.  Until well into the 20th Century, when an MP was appointed as a minister he had to resign as an MP and seek re-election but there are now no such restrictions on the power of Prime Ministers to appoint MPs or Lords as ministers.  Ministers are not usually appointed by the Prime Minister for reasons of trying to achieve the best management and administration of the department. The normal purpose is party political convenience, whether to seek balance between left and right or north and south or to bring somebody into the tent rather than having them being difficult outside, without any real consideration of what is best for the department concerned.

Those appointed are now predominantly professional MPs who increasingly have little experience of running any major organisation.  Politics has moved away from ideology towards delivery but most ministers have a background in media imagery or in small organisations rather than in policy implementation on the scale required at Government level.

Ministers are frequently reshuffled in order to give the appearance of action or renewal solely to boost party poll ratings rather than to improve the management of the departments.  As was said by Caius Petronius, Roman Consul, in 66 A.D.: 'We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganised.  I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising: and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress, while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.'

There is substantial movement of ministers at Cabinet level. By the end of the Parliament in 2005 only six ministers survived from the original 1997 Cabinet of 22.  These were Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, John Prescott, Margaret Beckett, Jack Straw and Alistair Darling.  Only three, 14%, are still in the Cabinet in 2010.

The speed with which ministers move can be seen from considering over the last two decades the Secretaries of State for Work and Pensions (formerly Social Security) and for Education (now Children, Schools and Families), areas where careful and consistent long-term leadership is particularly important.  In the 21 year period mid-1988 to mid-2009 the Department of Work and Pensions and the Department of Education each had 11 Secretaries of State.  Similarly there have been four Secretaries of State for Defence in the last four years despite the importance of the conflicts in Iran and Afghanistan.

The senior minister in the department, normally the Secretary of State, has little or no influence on which junior ministers will be appointed to serve under him or her as these appointments are made independently by the Prime Minister.  This system also often leads to ministers from very different ideological backgrounds succeeding each other and directing that completely different sets of priorities be followed by the department at which they have newly arrived.  They seek to make their political mark in the comparatively short time that they will have in office, almost certainly a lesser time then it will take any of their initiatives fully to be implemented.

In order to give departments greater stability, and Cabinet Ministers more control over their ministerial team, the appointment/dismissal of junior ministers would be the joint responsibility of the Prime Minister and the respective Cabinet Minister.  They would both have to sign the recommendation to the monarch for the appointment or dismissal of a junior minister.

Although it is recognised that the Cabinet Minister is beholden to the Prime Minister for their job and therefore could come under pressure, this system is much more like that which works in other large organisations where a chief executive should never decide unilaterally and without consultation who should be appointed to work in positions two or more layers below them.

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