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Secretary of State for the Home Department

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (the Home Secretary) is the chief United Kingdom government minister responsible for law and order in the United Kingdom; his or her remit includes policing, the criminal justice system, the prison service, internal security, and matters of citizenship and immigration. The Home Office has also previously dealt with social issues, including social exclusion, equality and race relations, but the responsibility for these areas is now held by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.

Unlike many other governments, the British government has separate departments for the issues dealt with by the Home Office and for legal, judicial and civil rights issues; these have been dealt with by the Lord Chancellor's Department. The Lord Chancellor enjoys infamy because despite the significance of his role (which spans all three branches of government) he is unelected. There have been repeated calls for the scrapping of the office and its replacement with a Justice Department headed by an elected Cabinet member, or the merger of the department with the Home Office. In June 2003 the government announced, as part of a cabinet reshuffle, that it intended to abolish the Lord Chancellor and replace his department with a Department of Constitutional Affairs headed by a Secretary of State.

Home Secretaries since 1782


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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Secretary of State for the Home Department".