Politics & International Relations
Ministerial Responsibility
Ministerial responsibility refers to the principle that government ministers are accountable to the parliament or legislature for their actions and the actions of their departments. This means they are expected to answer questions, provide explanations, and ultimately take responsibility for any failures or misconduct within their areas of authority. It is a key aspect of democratic governance and the separation of powers.
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7 Key excerpts on "Ministerial Responsibility"
eBook - PDFHolding Power to Account
Accountability in Modern Democracies
- R. Mulgan(Author)
- 2003(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
The assumption that ministers are responsible to the legislature is to be found in most parliamentary systems where ministers are drawn from the legislature and must answer to it (though it is absent from presidential systems where the president is elected separately from the legislature). More broadly still, the general principle that the person in charge of an organisation should answer publicly for the collective actions of the organisation and for those of its individual members is a feature of hierarchically structured organisations in all systems of government and, indeed, in all sectors of society. Thus Ministerial Responsibility, though often formulated in narrowly legalistic terms as a technical constitutional convention, is best understood as a species of general organisational accountability where the obligations of accountability are located with the person in charge (Chapter 6). The accountability obligations of ministers are sometimes described by constitutional experts as principles of 'individual Ministerial Responsibility', Government Accountability: Political Mechanisms 49 to distinguish them from 'collective Ministerial Responsibility' which refers to the requirements that the ministry as a whole should have the support of a majority in the lower house and that ministers should publicly support the collective decisions of Cabinet (for example, Woodhouse, 1994, Ch. 1). The distinction is somewhat misleading because the obligations to report, justify and rectify, though formally resting with individual ministers, have always been exercised in the collective context of Cabinet government. In practice, ministers are themselves accountable to their ministerial and party colleagues and to the prime minister as party leader as well as formally to Parliament. Major decisions are taken by the government as a whole and when ministers are in political difficulty their leader and colleagues typically rally to their support.
eBook - PDFAustralian Politics in the Twenty-First Century
Old Institutions, New Challenges
- Stewart Jackson, Joff Lelliott, Shannon Brincat, Josephine Bourne, Nick Economou(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
Individual Ministerial Responsibility As well as being collectively responsible for the decisions and actions of Cabinet, ministers are also individually responsible for the policies and programs within their portfolio. In everyday language that means they are answerable for everything that happens in their department(s), and if things go wrong the buck stops with the minister. In theory, the minister is thus responsible for every action and decision by every public servant within their department(s), although over time the practice has changed and, in reality, the buck often stops with ministerial staff or senior bureaucrats. In the Westminster chain of accountability, the way individual responsibility occurs is through parliament with ministers held accountable via mechanisms such as answering questions in the chamber and attending Estimates hearings. It is also why misleading parliament is traditionally seen as such a serious offence. In the modern world, accountability to parliament is supplemented with media scrutiny of ministers. Rewind to 1901 and the Treasury had 41 staff and External Affairs just 16, so ministers could be across the detail and activities of every member of staff in a way that ministers cannot be today when departments often have thousands of employees, across multiple sites and with many in highly technical roles. So where once ministers could reasonably expect to be fully in control of all decisions and all detail, this is no longer the case. Individual responsibility has evolved accordingly, and in recent decades it has been a generally accepted principle that ministers must make every effort to be across their portfolios, to ask questions and seek information, but their accountability only extends to what they could reasonably be expected to know or have enquired about.
eBook - ePub- Ian Holland, Jenny Fleming(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Taylor & Francis(Publisher)
Where different meanings have been attributed, it has been to the extent that the responsibility of ministers to parliament is described as requiring them to account or answer for their responsibilities. However, in 1993 the UK government sought to distinguish between the two words, arguing that while accountability related to the constitutional obligation of ministers to account to parliament for their departments and agencies, responsibility ‘implies personal involvement in an action or decision, in a sense that implies personal credit or blame for that action or decision’. It therefore follows that ‘a Minister is accountable for all the actions and activities of his department, but not responsible for all the actions in the sense of being blameworthy’ (Cabinet Office, 1993). The use of such a distinction to protect ministers from being seen as personally responsible for minor failings or for actions of their officials, of which they had no knowledge and could be expected to have none, is uncontroversial, although it would seem to serve little constitutional purpose, merely restating the position as understood since Crichel Down (Maxwell Fyfe, 1954). However, the premise that Ministerial Responsibility is composed of two separate elements, rather than being part of the same process and inextricably linked, enables ministers to escape responsibility (in the sense of blame) for a series of operational errors, which amount to mismanagement or negligence on the minister’s part, on the basis that no individual mistake was his/ her own (Public Service Committee (PSC), 1995-96, para, 13). Moreover, the apparent separation of the two concepts presents a danger of there being a surfeit of ministerial ‘accountability’, that is, of ministers giving explanations and justifications which protect their positions and deflect blame, and little acceptance of ministerial ‘responsibility’ (Gregory, 1998, p
eBook - PDFProfessionalism and Public Service
Essays in Honour of Kenneth Kernaghan
- David Siegel, Kenneth Rasmussen(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- University of Toronto Press(Publisher)
8 Concerning Ministerial Responsibility, in 1979 Kernaghan proposed softening the strict conditions of the ideal model, concluding that ‘the minister is answerable to Parliament in that he must explain and defend the actions of his department before Parliament [but] is not answerable to Parliament for all the administrative errors of his depart-ment.’ 9 He went on to emphasize that ‘the essential condition’ is that elected and appointed officials, or both, bear responsibility for all govern-ment actions … if officials waste public funds, break the law or violate cit-izen’s rights, the public expects that someone will be held accountable for these misdeeds. If ministers do not accept responsibility for departmental transgressions, the focus of blame shifts to public servants. But the con-ventions of Ministerial Responsibility and political accountability still pro-tect the anonymity of public servants and restrict their answerability to Parliament. 10 He recognized however, that this formulation did not resolve the mat-ter, as there were ‘major problems’ in the way Ministerial Responsibility was actually practised: On those exceptional occasions when blame is publicly attributable to spe-cific officials, disciplinary action is handled as an internal administrative matter with the result that the public rarely learns what penalties, if any, are imposed … Moreover, successive Auditors General have documented the ‘horrible stories’ of a widespread and continuing absence of economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in the government’s expenditure of public Revisiting Political Neutrality and Ministerial Responsibility 75 funds. Consequently, it appears to the public that on some occasions a gap exists between ministerial and administrative responsibility because nei-ther minister nor public servant seem to be held accountable for malad-ministration.
eBook - PDFBritish Government and the Constitution
Text and Materials
- Colin Turpin, Adam Tomkins(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
The ultimate sanction of ministerial resignation continues to have consti- tutional validity. As Peter Barberis says, ‘the bottom line of sacrifice must, in principle, remain visible and generally understood in order to give guts to the other dimensions of accountability’ (The Civil Service in an Era of Change (1997), p 141). The House of Commons Public Service Committee (2nd report of 1995–96, HC 313) also stood firm on this point: [T]he attempt to ensure Ministers are accountable by seeking their resignation may be an informal and highly political affair. It cannot be reduced to firm rules and conventions. Nevertheless ... it remains an essential component of the control of government. It is, in effect, the final stage in a process of accountability. Yet there are, as Barberis notes (above), other dimensions of accountability, and the principle of Ministerial Responsibility is not exhausted by its potential- ity for inducing resignations. It supports and gives focus to all the available instruments for the scrutiny of the executive, such as parliamentary Questions, debates and select committee inquiries. Even if, as in the usual case, a minister is able to disclaim personal responsibility for departmental errors or failures, he or she is still expected to ‘accept responsibility’ in the sense of having to give an account to Parliament of the circumstances, take into consideration views expressed in the House and inform it of disciplinary or remedial action taken. 586 British Government and the Constitution ‘Where things go wrong, the Minister is responsible for putting them right and for telling Parliament how he has done so’ (Mr Roger Freeman, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Public Service Committee, 1st special report of 1996– 97, HC 67, Annex A, para 11).
eBook - PDFTurpin and Tomkins' British Government and the Constitution
Text and Materials
- Alison L. Young(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Cambridge University Press(Publisher)
The ultimate sanction of ministerial resignation continues to have constitu- tional validity. As Peter Barberis says, ‘the bottom line of sacrifice must, in principle, remain visible and generally understood in order to give guts to the other dimensions of accountability’ (The Civil Service in an Era of Change (1997), p. 141). The House of Commons Public Service Committee (2nd Report of 1995–96, HC 313) also stood firm on this point: [T]he attempt to ensure Ministers are accountable by seeking their resignation may be an informal and highly political affair. It cannot be reduced to firm rules and conventions. Nevertheless . . . it remains an essential component of the control of government. It is, in effect, the final stage in a process of accountability. Yet there are, as Barberis notes (above), other dimensions of accountability, and the principle of Ministerial Responsibility is not exhausted by its potential- ity for inducing resignations. It supports and gives focus to all the available instruments for the scrutiny of the executive, such as parliamentary questions, debates and select committee inquiries. Even if, as in the usual case, a minister is able to disclaim personal responsibility for departmental errors or failures, he or she is still expected to ‘accept responsibility’ in the sense of having to give an account to Parliament of the circumstances, take into consideration views expressed in the house and inform it of disciplinary or remedial action taken. ‘Where things go wrong, the Minister is responsible for putting them right and for telling Parliament how he has done so’ (Mr Roger Freeman, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Public Service Committee, 1st Special Report of 1996–97, HC 67, Annex A, para 11).
eBook - PDFCan Institutions Have Responsibilities?
Collective Moral Agency and International Relations
- Toni Erskine(Author)
- 2003(Publication Date)
- Palgrave Macmillan(Publisher)
1 Introduction: Making Sense of ‘Responsibility’ in International Relations – Key Questions and Concepts Toni Erskine* Discussions of international relations are rife with assertions of responsibility: to ‘fight terrorism’, to ‘promote peace’, ‘democracy’ or ‘human dignity’, to ‘feed the starving’, to ‘rescue’ and to ‘protect’ those threatened with massacre, to ‘save the environment’, to do something to prevent, or remedy, injustices and crises. Of course, myriad questions accompany any discussion of responsibilities – never more so than when we speak of them on a global scale. We might ask to whom we have particular duties, how far our obligations extend, and what the source of such ethical imperatives could be. 1 These are difficult, important, and often passionately debated points of inquiry. 2 Yet, rais- ing them assumes that we already know who the bearers of specific responsibilities are. Sometimes we do. When addressing problems in international politics, however, this is often not the case. We might each, as individuals, be understood to have responsibilities to certain others and for certain outcomes. Nevertheless, each of us, however talented, and however influential the roles we inhabit, would be hard pressed to confront the most serious problems in international politics as individuals. Indeed, as individuals, we cannot meet many of those respon- sibilities that we variously voice with caution and conviction. Moral burdens, it seems, must often be borne elsewhere. This is, perhaps, com- monsense. The move of turning to institutions (in the sense of formal organizations) as bearers of these responsibilities might also, to some, be intuitive. Yet, institutions in international politics are many and diverse and it does not necessarily make sense – either in theory or practice – to direct claims to duty (or concomitant charges of blame) towards these formal organizations.
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