individual ministerial responsibility

• Individual ministerial responsibility is the idea that ministers are responsible for the running of their department and its policies. They also have responsibility for the standard of their own personal conduct. 
• June 2022 Lord Geidt The government's ethics adviser resigned. He had  faced a tough grilling from a cross-party committee of MPs, during which he conceded it was “reasonable” to suggest Johnson may have broken the ministerial code – which includes an overarching duty to act in accordance with the law.
• November 2020 The home secretary, Priti Patel,  avoided the sack despite a Cabinet Office inquiry reportedly uncovering evidence of bullying within the Home Office. The inquiry concluded that Patel broke the ministerial code of conduct, but the prime minister, Boris Johnson, ignored the findings and ruled that she did not break the code. As a result, she did  not lose her position.
• October 2022 Suella Braverman resigned as home secretary after sharing secure information from private email. Which was a breach of the Ministerial Code. In her resignation letter she acknowledged she had breached government security rules, stating: "I have made a mistake; I accept responsibility; I resign." However she was reappointed by the new PM Rishi Sunak one week later. Recent precedents would suggest she did not need to resign and the was most likely a political maneuver to undermine Liz Truss.
• In 2018, Theresa May, who had already been weakened by her poor performance in the 2017 general election, continued divisions over EU withdrawal and the Grenfell Tower disaster, had little choice but to accept Amber Rudd’s resignation as home secretary, although she was a close political ally.
• Matt Hancock, health secretary, 2021

  In 2021, The Sun newspaper published photographs of the secretary of state for health, Matt Hancock, surreptitiously kissing a colleague, Gina Coladangelo. Hancock’s flagrant disregard for Covid distancing regulations, despite being health secretary, caused an outcry and he was quickly forced to resign from the government.
• Gavin Williamson, minister of state (minister without portfolio), 2022

  The Conservative chief whip Wendy Morton complained that Gavin Williamson had sent her abusive texts over his not being invited to the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. Allegations that he had used bullying language against civil servants when he was defence secretary also surfaced. Facing a fast-developing media and opposition storm of criticism, Williamson resigned from Sunak’s government on 8 November.
• The blurring of lines of accountability has meant that in some cases, civil servants rather than ministers have been held responsible for departmental errors.
• Rudd resigned as home secretary in 2018. She writes to the prime minister saying she has “become aware of information provided to my office which makes mention of targets. I should have been aware of this, and I take full responsibility that I was not”. Downing Street sources say new information had become available which convinced Rudd she had inadvertently misled parliament.