ministerial responsibility

•  the ministerial code? 

  • Have a duty to Parliament to account, and be held to account, for the policies, decisions, and actions of their departments and agencies
  • Obliged to give accurate information to Parliament, and if they knowingly mislead Parliament, they are expected to resign
  • Obliged to use government resources fairly and avoid conflict of interests
  • Ministers are responsible for deciding how they conduct themselves, but they remain in office so long as they retain the confidence of the prime minister
• Individual Ministerial Responsibility

  • Expectation to uphold the ministerial code
  • Ministers should abide by the ‘Nolan Principles’, seven principles of public life (Selflessness, Integrity, Objectivity, Accountability, Openness, Honesty and Leadership)
  • If ministers fail to do any of the following, they are expected to resign;
  • If the policies and decisions of their departments are deemed unsatisfactory.
  • If ministers make a serious error of judgement.
  • If a minister’s department makes an error, even if the minister is not involved.
  • If their personal conduct falls below the expected standard.
• Michael Fallon resigned as Defence Minister on Nov. 1st 2017. This was due to details of previous sexual harassment/misconduct being picked up in the newspapers. Pestminster Scandal!

  Michael
• Priti Patel resigned as International Development Minister on Nov 8th 2017. This was due to having secret meetings with the Israeli Government while on ‘holiday’, she even discussed using her aid budget to support Israeli military- PM did not know! This was more of a push.
• Amber Rudd resigned April 30th 2018 due to Windrush Scandal, she took the blame for the scandal where Caribbean immigrants had been wrongly deported and she was accused of lying to an inquiry into the scandal.
• Charles Clarke, home sec in Blair’s govt. Clarke was challenged by opposition MPs in April 2006 over the inability of the Home Office to account for the movements of more than 1000 foreign prisoners after they had served their sentences. He privately offered to resign but the PM backed him to continue in office.  10 days later, Blair sacked Clarke as part of a wider cabinet reshuffle, following poor results for the Labour party.
• 2004 The Secretary of State for Defence, Geoff Hoon, had to explain to the House why a soldier had died in Iraq. The soldier died because the MOD hadn’t supplied enough body armour for the number of troops there
• 2009 The MPs’ expenses scandal has led to Shahid Malik stepping down as Justice Minister. He has not made a mistake in his ministerial role per se but the Ministerial Code of Conduct that all members of government are expected to abide by has been breached - the code dictates that ministers must not use their position for financial advantage. justice minister had benefited from a "discounted" rent on the three-bedroom house he registered as his main home in his Dewsbury constituency
• Damian Green, First Secretary of State, resigned in December 2017 after an inquiry found he had violated the Ministerial Code
• Robin Cook resigned as Foreign Secretary in 2003, as he disagreed with the Iraq War and couldn’t support it.
• Boris Johnson (Foreign Sec) and David Davis (Brexit Sec) on 15th July 2018 in protest of the Chequers agreement that agreed the UK negotiating position with the EU, they thought it was too soft.
• Tracy Couch (Sports Minister) resigned on the 1st November, as she disagreed with the Government delaying the reducing of the maximum stake for Fixed Odd Betting Terminals
• Dominic Raab (Brexit Sec) and Esther McVey (Work and Pensions sec) resigned on the 15th November 2018 in protest against the draft EU withdrawal agreement.
• 13 Conservative frontbenchers - including four Cabinet ministers - defied Theresa May when they abstained on an amended Government motion ruling out a no-deal Brexit in all circumstances
• June 2017, 23 ministers resigned due to disagreements with the government over Brexit.
• David Davis, Brexit Secretary, resigned in July 2018 due to his disagreements over the Prime Minister’s negotiations for Brexit
• Boris Johnson, Foreign Secretary, resigned in July 2018, also due to disagreements over the Prime Minister’s negotiations for Brexit
• 2014 Baroness Warsi, Minister of State at Foreign Office and Minister for Faith and Communities, resigned over disagreement with govt policy on the Israel and Gaza conflict
• Boris Johnson, as Foreign Secretary in November 2017, mishandled the Zagari-Ratcliffe case, potentially leading to her being in an Iranian prison for longer.
• Despite pressure, Boris Johnson never resigned in 2017-2018 despite writing many articles against Government policy.
• Theresa May refused to accept responsibility for the failings of the Border Control Agency and blamed Brodie Clark for the relaxation of controls.
• Alistair Campbell, Blair’s spin doctor, suggested if ministers can withstand the media barrage for more than a week, they can stay in office.
• Ken Clarke and Theresa May made contradictory statements about what the UK should do about the Human Rights Act in 2010 and 2011.
• Nick Clegg was very critical of David Cameron’s policy at the EU summit in December 2011.
• Priti Patel bullied staff in the Home Office.
• The internal row that delayed the report on Priti Patel’s conduct was clear to see: Allan concluded Patel had breached the Ministerial Code, even if she wasn’t aware she was bullying staff, but the prime minister concluded Patel had not breached the code and should not resign.
• In the summer of 2020, after a furore over A-level results, the chief executive of Ofqual and permanent secretary of the Department for Education resigned from their posts, under pressure from the government, even though no clear account had been given to Parliament of what had occurred and who was ultimately responsible.
• The education secretary Gavin Williamson remained in post despite being called by the Prime Minister to Downing Street to be told that he would have no further role in Sky.
• Vince Cable managed to retain his Cabinet seat despite being called by the Prime Minister to Downing Street to be told that he would have no further role in Sky.
• Jeremy Hunt remained as Culture Secretary when it was suggested his closeness to James Murdoch made him biased.
• Collective responsibility: the notion that government (as a collective whole) is responsible to Parliament for its actions. If the government was defeated in a vote of no confidence, all of its members would resign. Under this, all ministers publically support policy from all departments, even if privately they may have some reservations. Ministers resign if they cannot publically support policy, even if it is not related to their department. Cabinet disagreements are therefore kept private and resolved privately.
• in some cases, collective responsibility may be weakened. For example, during the coalition, government policy needed to be negotiated between two parties, taking the coalition agreement into account. As the two parties had different sets of beliefs, and different manifestos, binding ministers to collectively support all policy would have been impossible. Therefore, certain areas were identified as being exempt from collective responsibility 
• Collective Cabinet Responsibility can be formally suspended by the PM, though this is rare. Harold Wilson did it in 1975, allowing ministers to campaign on different sides in the referendum on the UK’s continued membership of the European Economic Community. Gordon Brown allowed some leeway on the 2008 Embryology Bill, to accommodate Catholic ministers.
• During the 2010-2015 Coalition, Collective Cabinet Responsibility didn’t apply to certain agreed issues, such as the referendum on the AV voting system in 2011, and some abstentions were tolerated.
• Collective Ministerial Responsibility is the convention under which Government Ministers agree that Government decisions are taken collectively and should therefore be supported in public by all Ministers. This is an important part of Cabinet Government.
• Individual Ministerial Responsibility is a convention under which a Government Minister is expected to take responsibility for not just their own actions, but for all decisions made within their department.
• One of the most famous examples of a resignation of a resignation under Collective Responsibility was Robin Cook in 2003. Cook was a Senior Labour Minister and had been Foreign Secretary and a key figure in the formation of New Labour. In 2003, however, he disagreed with the decision to go to war with Iraq without first seeking a new resolution from the UN Security Council. He subsequently gave a powerful speech from the backbenches
• A quite recent example of Collective Responsibility can be found in Lord Frost. Frost was the Cabinet Member responsible for Brexit and was previously a Special Advisor to Boris Johnson. He had been given a peerage so that he could sit in the Cabinet. However, in December 2021 he resigned from the Government over the plans to introduce ‘Plan B’ COVID restrictions.
• Another relatively recent resignation that took place in a dramatic fashion was that of Lord Agnew as Treasury Minister. He resigned whilst speaking from the Despatch Box in the House of Lords saying that the Government was failing to adequately deal with fraudulent claims by companies for COVID-19 relief. He said that “the current state of affairs is not acceptable” and, and that such, “it feels somewhat dishonest to stay on in that role”.
• David Davis -collective ministerial responsibility– David Davis was appointed to the newly founded Cabinet position of Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Brexit Secretary). During the referendum campaign he had campaigned for Britain to leave the European Union. As Brexit Secretary it was his job to negotiate with the EU about the terms of Britain’s Exit. It quickly became clear that he was being largely sidelined by Theresa May and when she announced her Chequers Plan he decided he could no longer stay in post.