The Right Honourable (abbreviation: The Rt Hon. or variations) is an honorific style traditionally applied to certain persons and collective bodies in the United Kingdom, the former British Empire and the Commonwealth of Nations. The term is predominantly used today as a style associated with the holding of certain senior public offices in the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and, to a lesser extent, Australia.
Right in this context is an adverb meaning 'very' or 'fully'. Grammatically, The Right Honourable is an adjectival phrase which gives information about a person. As such, it is not considered correct to apply it in direct address, nor to use it on its own as a title in place of a name; but rather it is used in the third person along with a name or noun to be modified.
Right may be abbreviated to Rt, and Honourable to Hon., or both. The is sometimes dropped in written abbreviated form, but is always pronounced.
Countries with common or current usage
United Kingdom
Entitlement
According to the British government, the following persons are entitled to be styled Right Honourable:
Members of the Privy Council
The Privy Council is notionally the body of formal advisors to the sovereign. Members of the Cabinet, senior politicians, and some few other officials are appointed as members for life, and are personally entitled to be styled Right Honourable thereafter. Peers below the rank of marquess Earls and countesses, viscounts and viscountesses and barons and baronesses who hold a substantive title (whether hereditary or for life) are personally entitled to the style Right Honourable. A peer's wife or widow also has a legal right to the style of her husband. The lord mayors and lord provosts of certain cities (ex officio) The lord mayors of London, Cardiff, Belfast, Bristol and York and the lord provosts of Edinburgh and Glasgow are styled Right Honourable while in office. But the title is attached to the office, not to the name of the person.
Privy counsellors
Privy counsellors are appointed by the sovereign on the advice of the prime minister, and remain members for life unless they resign or are expelled. In practice, membership of the privy council is granted to:
all members of the Cabinet (itself technically a committee of the Privy Council), and certain other senior ministers in the government; senior members of the Shadow Cabinet, the leaders of the major political parties in parliament, and the Speaker of the House of Commons; the first ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and the leader of the largest opposition party in the Scottish Parliament; the two archbishops of the Church of England, who sit in the House of Lords ex officio; senior judges, who fulfil the judicial functions of the Privy Council; senior representatives of the Commonwealth nations; and senior members of the Royal Family.
A large proportion of the former and current prominent politicians of the United Kingdom are thus entitled to be styled Right Honourable.
No new appointments have been made to the Privy Council of Northern Ireland since 1971, but surviving appointed members remain entitled to the style. Non-British Commonwealth-citizen judges appointed to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council are also entitled to the style, although the appellation may be ignored in the judge's home country.
It is the current practice of the House of Lords and the College of Arms to apply the style Right Honourable to privy counsellors only.
Peers
All holders of a substantive peerage below the rank of marquess are entitled to be styled Right Honourable, as are their wives and widows. However, a peer's heir who uses a courtesy title is not accorded the corresponding style. Peers above the rank of earl are entitled to different styles: dukes and duchesses are styled The Most Noble or His or Her Grace, and marquesses and marchionesses are styled as The Most Honourable.
In order to differentiate peers who are also members of the Privy Council—and therefore entitled to a style in both capacities—from peers who are not, the post-nominal letters can be used to identify the privy counsellors. This applies to peers of all rank, as a holder of a dukedom or marquessate who becomes a Privy Counsellor retains their higher style and so could not be identified without the letters. In practice, in contexts where there might be confusion, official publications use the style Right Honourable exclusively to identify privy counsellors.