individual ministerial responsibility

• Accountable to Parliament

  Makes ministers accountable to Parliament for the actions of their department

  • Appear before DSCs
  • Give written responses to questions
  • Respond honestly to UQs and justify the actions of the department
• Competence

  Should take personal responsibility for serious mistakes that happen within their department
• Propriety

  Ministers are responsible for their personal conduct, accountable to the PM who decides if ministers should resign
• The definition was set in the Ministerial Code of 1992
• Parliament examples

  Rudd resigned as Home Secretary in 2018 over misleading the Home Affairs Select Committee over targets for removal of illegal immigrants

  2022 - Boris Johnson makes himself accountable over Partygate and talks carefully in Parliament to avoid incriminating himself
• Propriety examples

  2017 - Fallon was sacked by May as defence secretary after assaulting several female reporters

  2018 - new ministerial code cracks down on bullying

  2022 - Chris Pincher resigns over harassment claims

  2023 - Raab bullying case led to his resignation
• Competence examples

  1954 - Dugdale took responsibility for the mistakes of his department and resigned, despite the Crichel Down affair not being mostly his fault 

  1982 - Lord Carrington resigned as foreign secretary from Thatcher’s government in the immediate aftermath of Argentina’s invasion of the Falklands

  2022 - Allegra Stratton, a civil servant and an advisor to the PM resigned over Partygate instead of Johnson
• Ministers refusing to resign

  Lamont was the Chancellor of Exchequer in 1992, and the ERM raised interest rates by 5%, leading to ‘Black Wednesday’. He refused to resign, claiming that the PM Major also pursued the policy and should step down too

  2019 - Gavin Williamson’s Centre-Assessed Grades led to unfairness and he was criticised over the system, eventually replacing it with teacher assessed grades. The Head of Ofqual resigned but Williamson did not

  2020 - Priti Patel the home secretary did not resign after an inquiry found evidence of her bullying civil servants
• Civil Service Performance

  Effective - keeps civil servants on their toes as any mistake could damage the reputation of their minister and thus their chances at promotion

  Ineffective - ministers increasingly blaming special advisors and civil servants e.g. Allegra Stratton over Party Gate, Derek Lewis in 1995 over mass prison break outs, and the Head of Ofqual after the failure of Centre Assessed Grades
• Accountability

  Effective - Ensures accountability is spread out throughout government

  Ineffective - Ministers increasingly resist resigning for their mistakes
• Public confidence

  Effective - Ministers expected to hold a high degree of personal propriety which has evolved to include bullying (2018)

  Ineffective - Public confidence in the integrity of the gov has collapsed through the PM choosing not to demote a minister who has broken the code