Order-in-Council

Orders in Council in the United Kingdom are used, therefore, for matters which still fall within the Royal Prerogative: dealing with servants of the Crown, such as the standing orders for civil servants, making appointments in the Church of England and dealing with international relations.

In the rest of the Commonwealth they are used to carry out any decisions made by the cabinet and the executive that would not need to be approved by parliament.

Although the orders are nominally made by the Queen or her representative, her assent is now purely formality. What actually happens is that the Lord President of the Council (a cabinet minister) reads out batches of Orders-in-Council, which will have been written by the government, with the monarch, after every couple of orders, saying 'Agreed'. They then pass into law, where they are fully effective, although the usual rules of English Law in respect of the dominance of Parliament over the Royal Prerogative apply, so they can be overruled by Acts of Parliament or Statutory Instruments. Of course, since the government writes these too, that now never occurs.

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