Ministerial Responsibility essays

Ministerial Responsibility essays From the offset, there is a conflict of principles regarding the so-called convention of ministerial responsibility. Romantically, the Queen can never be answerable to Parliament and if we see the Crown as the Executive, then ministers cannot be held accountable, insofar as they represent the Queen-in Council-in Parliament. Surely, therefore, there can be no concrete constitutional convention compelling ministers to answer and explain to Parliament which is consistent with the traditional and stable conceptual Crown? However, this view is somewhat archaic, as it became incompatible with modern day politics and democracy, which began to require that ministers explain and justify themselves, and the actions of their departments, to the public through Parliament. The move of the public interest from the concerns of the lite to the affairs of the whole population in the middle years of the last century was marked by an expansion in the work of central government and the consequent recogn ition that it had to be done with greater competence than hitherto.1 So, it is through history and the expansion of Parliament beyond imperial matters, that the convention of ministerial responsibility has evolved and now purports to reflect the increasing need of providing information, which is seen to be in the public interest. This understanding of the principle can be said to represent something romantic about the constitution, insofar as it is emblematic of our democracy and rights, in exposing the conduct of the elected government, and, ultimately, in seeing that a punishment is delivered to delinquent ministers. Aside from accountability to Parliament, the convention fixes an onus upon the sanction of resignation and it is through an examination of the extent to which ministers recognise the existence of such a punishment that it will become discernible whether it exists as constitutional myth or reality. Principally, the conve...