The Cabinet Conservative Committee was set up by Neville Chamberlain as Chancellor of the Exchequer (and Chairman of the Conservative Research Department) in February 1934, and chaired by Stanley Baldwin. The purpose of the Committee was to provide and re-invigorate the National Government, then still led by Ramsay MacDonald, with policy ideas to take forward as Government policy for the 1935 General Election. It met in the offices of the Conservative Research Department between March 1934 and July 1935.

Joseph Ball, Director of the Conservative Research Department, also attended meetings of the CCC and was closely involved with Chamberlain in developing the policy research undertaken by the CRD on its behalf.

The main committee consisted of all the Conservative members of the Cabinet:

They were joined by the following Peers who, although initially outside the Cabinet, assumed Cabinet positions once Baldwin took over as Prime Minister in June 1935

In addition, as a Junior Minister, Lt-Col. John Colville, Parliamentary Secretary to the Department of Overseas Trade, was deemed ineligible to be a full member of the CCC but was co-opted to work on both of its sub-committees.

[There is an element of doubt as to the name of this committee as all references to it refer to it simply as the 'C.C.C' – nowhere is it described as the 'Cabinet Conservative Committee', although its membership consisted of all of the Conservative members of the Cabinet, along with 3 who subsequently joined it. A later [c.1960s?] summary of the work of this Committee describes it as the 'Conservative Consultative Committee', but it is not possible to tell whether this is correct. It has been widely referenced as the Cabinet Conservative Committee in academic works on Chamberlain's policy-making, but this appears to be based on what is probably a duplicate set of CCC papers held with the Chamberlain Papers at Birmingham University Library, and Chamberlain's own private correspondence, in which he also refers to it as the 'CCC'. The committee is not even described as the CCC until its sixth meeting, up to which point it is described as a 'Conference'. 'Leader's Conference' is the name which Baldwin used to describe his Shadow Cabinet in 1924, which also came to be known as the Conservative Consultative Committee. The resemblance of the CCC to a Shadow Cabinet is striking and this may have been what Chamberlain was striving to create in the peculiar circumstances of the National Government, albeit that the Conservatives were in Government but not leading it, and Chamberlain was not Leader of the Party but was effectively in control of Party policy-making.]

At the meeting of the full CCC on 27/04/1934 it was agreed to set up a sub-committee to make, 'recommendations as to the policy to be adopted in dealing with the various matters which have been under examination in the Department'. In practice, the sub-committee came to deal with a variety of subjects but including the relations between the State and Industry; the 'Most-Favoured Nation' clause in the UK's commercial treaties; Nursery School provision; the physique of the nation; non-contributory pension and unemployment.

Sub-Committee A was chaired by Chamberlain and consisted of:

It met on the 3 occasions:

The function of Sub-Committee B was 'To consider a report to the C.C. Committee as to the shares of the home market for agricultural products which should be assigned respectively to:

having regard to the paramount importance of protecting the home producer and of encouraging our inter-imperial trade, and to the possibility of securing from foreign producers openings for our own export trade, and having regard also to the importance of safeguarding our overseas investments and of encouraging our shipping trade'.

It was chaired by Lord Hailsham and consisted of: