collective ministerial responsibility

• Collective ministerial responsibility is the convention that ministers must support all decisions of the government in public. It means that they are responsible as a group to Parliament and thus to the people, and that discussions in Cabinet should be confidential. If defeated in a vote of no confidence in the Commons, the government as a whole resigns. The practice is designed to maintain the unity of the government in face of attacks by the opposition. 
• There have been occasions when collective responsibility has been modified for political reasons. A notable example was the need to find a compromise between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in order to form a coalition government in 2010
• In the spring of 2016 David Cameron, faced with an equally divided Conservative Party, reluctantly agreed to suspend collective responsibility on the European issue. The ensuing referendum
• Boris Johnson, foreign secretary, 2018

  Having been an unenthusiastic supporter of Theresa May’s Brexit negotiations, Boris Johnson finally resigned when he decided that he could not publicly support her Chequers Agreement as the basis for an EU withdrawal agreement. His ministerial letter of resignation provides a classic statement of the meaning of collective ministerial responsibility.
• Rishi Sunak, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Sajid Javid, health secretary, 2022

  Sunak and Javid resigned within minutes of each other. Sunak’s resignation letter focused on economic policy differences with the prime minister. In contrast, Javid focused on what he called the prime minister’s lack of ‘integrity’ and failure to instill ‘strong values’. Fatally damaged, Johnson announced his resignation 2 days later.