ministerial responsibility
MINISTERIAL RESPONSIBILITY
* Definition
* Individual Responsibility : Answerability
* Individual Responsibility : Resignation
* Collective Responsibility : Resignation and Unity
* Collective Responsibility : Collective Resignation
. The meaning and significance of the convention
The doctrine of Ministerial Responsibility is central to the British version of democracy. Britain has a strong executive and the effectiveness of democracy depends on the degree of control which parliament exercises over current government activities and the extent of accountability ( holding the government responsible for past actions ). A major concern of political and constitutional reformers is to alter the balance between an executive branch which is perceived as being over-powerful and a weak legislature.
There are four central ideas:
o Individual Ministers are 'answerable' to parliament for the actions of their department and civil servants are 'anonymous'.
o Ministers should 'carry the can' for mistakes made in their department by resigning. If a minister or his/her officials 'make errors of judgement, engage in unbecoming conduct or maladministration, then the minister is expected to shoulder the blame.
o Ministers have a collective responsibility to each - this implies that decisions are made collectively, that discussions are confidential and that every Minister must accept the collective decision of the Cabinet or else resign.
o Ministers have a collective responsibility to parliament in that if a government is defeated in a motion of censure it is obliged to resign or ask for a dissolution.
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2. Individual Responsibility : Answerability
Ministers are expected to answer to Parliament for the work of their department and this convention is embodied in a variety of procedures such as Question Time; the expectation that Ministers will open and wind up debates by explaining, justifying and defending government policy; the practice of departmental Ministers 'introducing' legislation within their sphere and ministerial appearances before DSCs. The convention therefore 'provides a coherent structure through which the work of departments can be explained' (Norton).
The convention is undoubtedly valuable - it means that Parliament ( especially the Commons) is the 'cockpit' of party struggle. But party domination of proceedings does limit the extent to which government policy can be scrutinised e.g. Question Time is largely employed for political 'point scoring' DSCs have limited powers and resources; examination of government legislation is totally inadequate.
One aspect of the convention is that civil servants are 'anonymous' i.e. that they are responsible to Ministers who are in turn responsible to Parliament. The implication is that everything is done in the Minister's name, in effect, is approved by a Minister. Government is now much too big for this to have any literal meaning. Much work of modern government must go on without Ministerial knowledge ( never mind control). This has led to an erosion of anonymity e.g. the blame for the excessive profits made by Ferranti in the Bloodhound Missiles contract in the 1960s was 'pinned' on named civil servants; the Vehicle & General Affair and the Westland Affair also saw officials 'named'. In the last two cases civil servants were denied the opportunity to defend themselves - because of the political interests of the government of the day. Civil servants were thus placed in 'an uncomfortable and badly exposed no-mans-land' (Drewy & Butcher ).
The convention of answerability does influence the general framework of British government e.g. the Opposition have a 'shadow' government with individuals 'responsible' for areas of policy. Ministers must explain and justify policy in Parliament at regular intervals not of their choosing. It is when dissatisfaction among the government's own back- benchers threatens to break out in open revolt that the government is most responsive to parliamentary pressure.
3. Individual Responsibility : Resignation
'Ministerial responsibility to Parliament: in it's classic sense of requiring a Minister to resign if a significant : mistake is made in ...
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The convention of answerability does influence the general framework of British government e.g. the Opposition have a 'shadow' government with individuals 'responsible' for areas of policy. Ministers must explain and justify policy in Parliament at regular intervals not of their choosing. It is when dissatisfaction among the government's own back- benchers threatens to break out in open revolt that the government is most responsive to parliamentary pressure.
3. Individual Responsibility : Resignation
'Ministerial responsibility to Parliament: in it's classic sense of requiring a Minister to resign if a significant : mistake is made in his department has long been a myth'. ( Drewry & Butcher ).
S.E. Finer wrote in the 1970s that, '... if each, or even very many charges of incompetence were habitually followed by the punishment of loss of office, it's deterrent: effect would be great. In fact, that sequence is not only exceedingly rare, but arbitrary and unpredictable.' Resignations, he argued, are decided neither by the circumstances of a particular episode, nor its gravity but are the result of 'haphazard consequence of a fortuitous concomitance of personal, party and political temper.'
Perhaps the major factor effecting resignation is party interest. The resignations over the Falklands invasion ( 1982 ) minimized the damage to Thatcher's government. Leon Brittan resigned in January 1986 only after he had lost the confidence of his own party and his resignation (and subsequent silence) served Mrs Thatcher's (and the government's) interests.
Perhaps the largest category of Ministerial resignations concern personal 'misbehaviour'. Examples include : Dalton's indiscretion over the Budget (1947); Profumo (1963) Lambton and Jellicoe (1973) over relationships with prostitutes; Parkinson over the pregnancy of his secretary (1987); Ridley ( comments about Europe especially Germany) 1990; Mandelson and Robinson (1999) over a personal loan from the latter to the former which had been kept secret from the Prime Minister. What all these incidents have in common is the damage which would have been done to the party if any Minister had continued in office.
In general, the cloak of party loyalty protects individual Ministers because admission of political error reflects on the government as a whole. Hence, in situations where the Minister is clearly personally associated with a failed policy ( and/or one which is severely criticised in Parliament and press) resignation depends on his or her relationship with the Prime Minister and party. Hence it is possible to cite a whole range of non-resignations - John Nott (Defence) was equally 'responsible' for the Falklands invasion as the ministers who resigned but his additional resignation would have made the real centre of blame - the government as a whole, especially the Prime Minister - too obvious; no resignations followed Labour disasters such as the Dome, the building of a new national stadium or the chaotic handling of the Foot and Mouth outbreak in 2001. Changing moral attitudes also means that the public are more tolerant of the personal behaviour of ministers - for example the Foreign secretary, Robin Cook, survived a messy split from his wife early in the life of the New Labour government in 1997.
So, the pure volume of government activity necessarily qualifies the scope of this convention; no-one seriously suggests that Ministers should 'carry the can' for everything their department does. But the major limitation is political so that the convention is 'at best, a matter of line drawing, and the precise location of the line at any time owes much more to political pragmatism than to constitutional convention' ( Drewry & Butcher). Ministers do resign but there is no constitutional regularity.
4. Collective Responsibility
There are three dimensions to this concept:
o Decisions (of Cabinet) are collective
o Discussions are confidential
o Ministers publicly abide by, and defend, collective decisions or else resign
Ministers do resign because they are not prepared to accept collective decisions. Some notable examples include:
o Anthony Eden - over Chamberlain's conduct of foreign policy (1938).
o Bevan, Wilson and Freeman - over Labour's re-armament programme and NHS prescription charges (1951).
o Thorneycroft ( Chancellor) and his junior Ministers ( Powell & Birch) over government economic policy ( 1958 )
o George Brown (deputy leader, Labour) over the style of decision-making in Wilson's government (1968).
o Michael Heseltine over the Westland affair (1986).
o Nigel Lawson over what he considered to be insufficient support from the Prime Minister over economic policy (1989).
o Geoffrey Howe over Mrs Thatcher's approach to Europe and more specifically her 'autocratic' Cabinet style (sharing Heseltine's reasoning, 1990).
However, Cabinets have sometimes included people notoriously at odds with major lines of policy - Churchill ( who favoured free trade) in Baldwin's Cabinet (1925-9); James Callaghan ( Home Secretary) opposed the Cabinet's decision to proceed with trade union legislation (1968-9); the convention was conveniently 'suspended' in 1975 and 1977 because of Labour divisions over Europe. For weeks before Heseltine's resignation over Westland there had been ill-concealed warfare between his department (Defence) and Leon Brittan's (Trade and Industry). The Tory Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, was an opponent of the poll tax. Under New Labour, there have been clear differences between ministers on the timing of Britain's adoption of the euro with the Prime Minister keen to enter for political reasons with the Chancellor more cautious on economic grounds. Governments are coalitions of opinion and they often try to blur policy differences, for example the current (April 2002) differences in the Cabinet on hunting with dogs and the degree to which the USA should be supported in an aggressive stance toward Iraq.
Nor can government decision-making be collective in the classical sense because government is too big. Government decisions are taken at various points in a series of peripheral networks surrounding full Cabinet. Three major resignations between 1986 and 1990 - Heseltine, Lawson and Howe - all involved allegations that Mrs. Thatcher was 'autocratic'. Government decisions therefore imply neither unity nor agreement. Cabinets are typified by personal and policy rivalries. Therefore when resignations do occur they are 'final straws' or failures of nerve or reflect personal motives or animosities (often longstanding).
That Cabinet discussions and disagreements are confidential is an important part of the doctrine of ministerial responsibility yet 'leaking' disagreements or details of Cabinet discussion has become somewhat commonplace. Mrs. Thatcher allegedly became notorious - at one time making it clear that she did not fully support Jim Prior's (moderate) trade union policies in the early 1980s.
So, the first aspect of this convention (that decisions are collective) is mythical. The second is regularly breached and the third is erratic in its operation. The convention serves no advantageous purpose for party governments. Cabinets are therefore full of real and potential conflict but resignations are rare.
5. Collective Responsibility : Collective Resignation
This requires that governments defeated on a vote of censure (or confidence) in the Commons should resign or request a dissolution (a general election).This aspect of the convention is operative in the sense that a government will always lose office if defeated in such a manner - it happened in 1979. Since 1867 there have been six instances but all were in 'unusual' circumstances - primarily because the government did not have an overall majority.
The current nature of politics makes the convention largely irrelevant - an election puts a government in power and so .J parliamentary 'confidence' is guaranteed; the government controls the Commons. The real division in British parliamentary politics is between government and Opposition not government and parliament. Parliament does not control the executive through the sanction of withdrawing its confidence from a government - its modern role is (at best) to reveal the activities of a government for ultimate public judgement at the time of a general election.
6. Summary and Conclusions
Ministers are answerable to parliament through a series of mechanisms - Parliamentary questions, debates, Select Committees and so on. Each of these techniques has its strengths and limitations - in general the extent and quality of scrutiny has greatly improved over the last twenty years but more could still be done (for example, providing DSCs with more resources)
Ministerial resignation is understandably limited by the size of modern government - it is not reasonable to expect a Minister to resign for the mistake of a civil servant if the Minister did not have personal knowledge of the decision. But even in cases where a Minister is personally involved, resignation is erratic - it depends largely on party political considerations.
The convention of Ministerial 'answerability' is not entirely satisfactory as a means (the only means) by which Parliament scrutinises the activities of government. The lack of proper means of scrutiny of the civil service provides a hole in the constitution.
Cabinet government ('shared discussion and shared decision' by 22 senior ministers) is a myth. The Cabinet does nor and cannot make or even review all major decisions of the government.
'Agreements' in Cabinet hide a multitude of actualities; policy-making involves a whole series of negotiations, trade- offs and compromises over longish time-spans. Governments are riven with disagreements (as leaks of information illustrate and diaries of former Ministers show) and typified by rivalries between departments and between Ministers ( which occasionally emerge openly). Ministers do from time to time resign - Heseltine, Lawson and Howe were major examples 1986- 90, but resignations tend to be over final straws and to be matters of personality and tactics rather than of principle.
The provision that governments must maintain the confidence of the Commons is operable (e.g. 1979) but is generally irrelevant because governments have an overall majority in the Commons.
In general the convention(s) have become subordinate to party government self-interest - their operation depends to a great degree on the extent to which governments are prepared to conform with the rules ( eg giving information to committees) and the extent to which government backbenchers are prepared to act independently of party interest. Political factors seem much more significant than constitutional conventions. This conclusion led some to advocate more widesweeping constitutional reforms such as a Freedom of Information Act and a Bill of Rights (introduced since 1997) as well as more powerful committees.
Questions:
When do ministers resign?
Explain the concept of collective responsibility.
