Date formed 11 May 2010 Head of government David Cameron Head of state Queen Elizabeth II | Date dissolved 8 May 2015 Deputy head of government Nick Clegg | |
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Member parties Conservative Party
Liberal Democrats | ||
David Cameron formed the First Cameron ministry after being invited by Queen Elizabeth II to begin a new government following the resignation of the previous Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Gordon Brown, on 11 May 2010. It was a coalition government, composed of members of both the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats.
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The government's Cabinet was made up of sixteen Conservatives and five Liberal Democrats with eight other Conservatives and one other Liberal Democrat attending cabinet but not members. The Cameron ministry was the first coalition government to have governed the United Kingdom since the Churchill war ministry of the Second World War. Following the 2015 British general election, the ministry was replaced by the single-party Second Cameron ministry.
History
The previous Parliament had been dissolved on 12 April 2010 in advance of the general election on 6 May. The election resulted in a hung parliament, no single party having an overall majority in the House of Commons, the Conservatives having the most seats but 20 short of a majority.
In the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition agreement of 11 May 2010, the two parties formed a coalition government. The new Parliament met on 18 May for the swearing-in of Peers in the House of Lords and newly elected and returning Members of Parliament in the House of Commons, and the election for the Speakership of the House of Commons. The Queen's Speech on 25 May set out the government's legislative agenda. Of the 57 Liberal Democrat MPs, only two refused to support the Conservative Coalition agreement, with former leader Charles Kennedy and Manchester Withington MP John Leech both rebelling.
The Liberal Democrats had five Cabinet members including Nick Clegg as Deputy Prime Minister though after the Cabinet and ministerial reshuffle, David Laws, who was a Minister of State, was allowed to attend the Cabinet but was not a full member. If a Liberal Democrat minister resigned or was removed from office, another member of the same party would have had to be appointed to the Cabinet.
Each cabinet committee had a chair from one party and a deputy chair from the other; there was also a cabinet committee specifically overseeing the operation of the coalition. Both parties' ministers shared collective responsibility for the government's positions, although the coalition agreement detailed several issues on which the parties agreed to differ; the Liberal Democrats abstained from voting in such cases. Clegg, as Deputy Prime Minister, took Prime Minister's Questions (PMQ) when Cameron was unavailable.
While the government's front benchers sat together in the House of Commons and the two parties acted as a bloc during PMQ, the Liberal Democrat and Conservative backbenchers sat apart and each had their own whips, and the two parties competed in by-elections. On 4 September 2012, David Cameron reshuffled his cabinet for the first time. He reshuffled his cabinet for the second time on 14 July 2014.