| SECRETARYOFSTATE | Title given to a cabinet minister in charge of a department |
| CURATOR | One in charge of a department in a museum (7) |
| MANAGER | Person in charge of a department (7) |
| HEAD | Person in charge of a department (4) |
| PREFECT | Name given to any of various officials placed in authority over others, including a magistrate in ancient Rome, head of a department in France or a senior school pupil (7) |
| PASTOR | A minister in charge of a Christian church or congregation (6) |
| DAME | From the Latin for "mistress of the household", word for a female ruler in its earliest sense, now a title given to a woman with the rank of Knight Commander or a holder of the Grand Cross in the orde |
| BRANCH | One of a number of boughs of a tree; or, by extension, a conceptual subdivision of a department, family, group of languages, subject etc (6) |
| CROSSMAN | Richard -, Secretary of State for Social Services from 1968-70 whose volumes Diaries of a Cabinet Minister were published posthumously in 1975 (8) |
| WHEREDOYOU | Start of a question to a employee in the movie section of a department store |
| BASSETT | Cabinet minister in the Lange government who went on to write biographies of several New Zealand Prime Ministers (7) |
| PASTORS | Ministers in charge of a church say |
| RACKSTRAW | Ralph got to marry the captain's daughter and torture a cabinet minister (9) |
| PRITI | Forename of the Witham (Essex) MP, a cabinet minister |
| PAULBOATENG | Labour politician who became the UK's first black Cabinet minister in 2002 (4,7) |
| JOHNELLIOTBURNS | ____, the UK's first working-class cabinet minister (in 1905) later coined the phrase "The Thames is liquid history" |
| PAUL | and 9dn, Labour Party politician who became the UK's first black Cabinet Minister in 2002 |
| BOATENG | see 6dn, Labour Party politician who became the UK's first black Cabinet Minister in 2002 |
| PORTFOLIO | What a cabinet minister holds? |
| AG | A Cabinet Minister (abbr.) |
