Why, in Britain today, is the classic doctrine of ministerial responsibility being rapidly dislodged and replaced by a range of techniques for securing accountability?

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Ministerial Responsibility

Parliament and the Government have a constitutional relationship.  Ministers are responsible and accountable to Parliament by the convention of individual ministerial responsibility.  There have been only twenty ministerial resignations and Parliament has only dismissed government three times, suggesting that ministers are acting responsibly.  Parliament is reassured legitimacy and the Government remains in power.  So why, in Britain today, is the classic doctrine of ministerial responsibility being rapidly dislodged and replaced by a range of techniques for securing accountability?  

A shifting political reality affects the composition and strength of both Parliament and the Government, altering their relationship.  While Parliament could, at one point, directly influence Government’s actions through individual ministerial responsibility, Government is now responsible and accountable to other pressures, not just Parliament.  Several cases, including the Crichel Down affair and the Prison Breakouts, have brought the ineffectiveness of individual ministerial responsibility to Parliament’s attention.  Parliament, to strengthen its influence over Government, has been replacing ministerial responsibility with a range of techniques for securing accountability.

The Government has the authority to execute its policies so long as it retains Parliament’s confidence.  Parliament has the power to defeat Government policies and ultimately dismiss Government with a Vote of Confidence.  This ensures that ministers exercise their power responsibly, checked by a democratically elected body.  If a minister or his department has been accused of maladministration, the minister is supposed to give account of the incident to Parliament and take responsibility for the abuse of power by resigning.  This ministerial sacrifice regains Parliament’s confidence in the Government since it is a high-ranking government official that is visibly removed. 

This form of ministerial responsibility seems to overlap with collective ministerial responsibility, which “obliges ministers to support and defend the policies and decisions of the government to which they belong” so that the government can “present a united front against the Opposition” (Turpin 214-215).  If a minister, or his department, acts to the detriment of government, he will, according to S E Finer, be asked to resign by the Prime Minister and his party.  If the minister resigns, Government escapes collective liability and ensures continued Parliamentary support.  This suggests that ministers are not directly responsible and accountable to Parliament.  Rather, other immediate influences, such as the Opposition, backbenchers and the media, regulate ministerial behaviour.  At the time individual ministerial responsibility became entrenched however, these factors were not yet considerable enough to reduce Parliament’s influence over the Government.

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Historical events change a political reality effecting legal consequences.  This idea underlies Flinders’ observation, “that we use this outdated convention to control a modern executive has contributed to the current problems” (Flinders 43).  Individual

ministerial responsibility became entrenched in the 1860s resulting from several factors beginning with the Reform Act of 1832 which increased the electorate by 50%.  About the same time, the House of Commons was liberated from Crown influence and parties and party discipline carried little influence (Flinders 44).  Departments were still small enough for Parliament to reasonably assume that ministers were directly responsible for ...

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