AS revision: Ministerial responsibility

Continuing a theme for this week, here is a quick revision note and reference to a recent example on Individual Ministerial Responsibility.

The MPs’ expenses scandal has led to Shahid Malik stepping down as Justice Minister. He has not made a mistake in his ministerial role per se but the Ministerial Code of Conduct that all members of government are expected to abide by has been breached - the code dictates that minsiters must not use their position for financial advantage.

Personally there is something ironic about Malik here. A couple of weeks ago I heard him defend the many hardworking MPs who did not engage in expenses fiddling at a conference on democratic engagement. Anyway, back to where this fits into the Politics syllabus…

Individual Ministerial Responsibility (IMR) is part of the wider doctrine of ministerial responsibility, which also includes Collective Ministerial Responsibility.

According to IMR:

• Ministers are individually responsible for the work of their departments and are answerable to Parliament for all their departments activities
• They are expected to accept responsibility for any failure in administration, any injustice to an individual or any aspect of policy which may be criticised in parliament, whether personally or not

Occasionally ministers resign due to policy errors – classic example is the famous Crichel Down affair of 1954 when the Agriculture Minister, Sir Thomas Dugdale, resigned because of departmental maladministration of which he knew nothing about.

Does Individual Ministerial Responsibility still exist?

It is very rare for a minister to resign as a result of an error of policy or administration. But it is clear that resignations do sometimes occur and that some sort of accountability exists.

Examples include –

• Lord Carrington (Foreign Secretary) in 1982 for failing to take due note of warnings that Argentina was planning a Falklands invasion
• Edwina Currie (Health) in 1988 over salmonella in eggs
• Norman Lamont (Chancellor) in 1993 after the withdrawal of the UK from the European Monetary System

However, sometimes there have been calls for ministers to go and they have resisted:

• Jacqui Smith in 2008 who said it was unsafe for her to walk the streets near her Peckham home.
• John Prescott in 2006 as DPM over his son’s property dealings in Prescott Hull constituency.
• Various Home and Justice Ministers regarding prison early release scandals, e.g. Charles Clarke in 2006 over the foreign prisoners fiasco.

By far the most common reason for ministers resigning are personal reasons (i.e. not directly connected to their ability to run a particular department).

• Peter Mandelson twice. DTI in 1998 over his home loan and then 2001 over his relations with the Hinduja brothers.
• David Blunkett twice. Home Secretary in 2004 over allegations of fast tracking a visa for his lover’s nanny. In 2005 from Work and Pensions when a conflict arose regarding shares in a DNA company.
• Ron Davies as Welsh Secretary in October 1998 over his so called ‘moment of madness’ on Clapham Common.

Again, this is a very grey area and much depends on a ministers popularity within (a) the media (b) the party and their personal closeness to the PM. Attitudes have also changed somewhat an extra-marital affair is unlikely to lead to a minister falling on their sword.

Therefore IMR still exists and therefore can be considered important to some extent, but resignations are most usually for personal reasons, and even then only when the embarrassment to the government of a resignation is less than the embarrassment of them keeping their job. In the case of Malik, the public outrage surrounding MPs’ expenses has meant that media pressure was too much for this relatively popular minister to resist.