§ Mr. AllenTo ask the Lord President of the Council if he will make a statement on the functions and role of the Privy Council.
§ Mr. MacGregorThe functions of the Privy Council are legislative, judicial and executive. In its legislative role the Privy Council provides the machinery for the exercise of certain powers of the royal prerogative now confined almost entirely to the fields of the dependent territories, Crown servants, and the grant of legal personality by the approval of royal charters of incorporation. Much the larger part of the Council's legislative role is in the exercise of the wide range of powers conferred by statute on the sovereign in Council or directly on the Council itself.
The judicial functions of the Privy Council are exercised by the Council's judicial committee which acts as the supreme court of appeal from courts of some Commonwealth countries which have retained this right of appeal, from courts of dependent territories and from those of the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. The judicial committee also exercises an appellate jurisdiction in respect of disciplinary proceedings in certain professions and certain decisions made by authorities of the Church of England.
The executive functions of the Privy Council also derive from both the royal prerogative of which the most important are the sovereign's powers to prorogue and dissolve Parliament, and statute. The rest largely comprise responsibility for a wide variety of appointments including the formalities of appointment of various Cabinet and other Ministers, high sheriffs, members of various statutory bodies, Her Majesty's inspector of schools, and members of university courts and councils.