On some occasions papers may not go ahead for consideration at a meeting that they have been lodged for, or a Cabinet committee might decide that a paper should not proceed. In these instances, Ministers may choose to withdraw a submission from a meeting.
Contact the Cabinet Office before the Cabinet or Cabinet committee meeting if your Minister intends to withdraw a paper. Note that withdrawing a paper is a different than deleting one that has been accidentally submitted, and is a formal process that may need to be recorded in a minute, depending on which stage of the process the paper is at when it is decided the paper needs to be withdrawn.
If a Minister decides not to proceed with a Cabinet paper that has been lodged in CabNet, and the meeting agenda has not yet been finalised, then a paper will not need to be formally withdrawn and can instead be removed from an agenda by Cabinet Committee Secretary. The Cabinet Office can also remove papers that have been accidentally lodged.
Once the Cabinet Office has published a final agenda, then a paper can only be withdrawn or deferred at the meeting for which it has been submitted. If a Minister wants to withdraw a paper, they will need to do so at the meeting. Following this, a minute will be issued for the item recording that it was withdrawn.