Individual ministerial responsibility

The doctrine of ministerial responsibility in the Australian Government was inherited in its adoption of the Westminster system. Commonwealth ministers are obliged to report failings of departments under their control to the Parliament, and to actively seek solutions to problems in their jurisdiction. A minister who fails to properly do either of these is expected to resign. However, in practice, resignations rarely occur for a number of reasons. Although public opinion remains strongly in favour of ministers resigning regardless of their personal involvement in departmental failings, the need for such actions has been eroded by the introduction of alternative mechanisms ensuring executive accountability, such as freedom of information laws and more powerful parliamentary committees. ==Canada==

For organizational purposes there are Cabinet Ministers who are responsible for all activity within their department. In Canada ministerial responsibility has been reduced as it has become increasingly common for top level civil servants to be called before Parliament, bypassing the minister. ==New Zealand==

In New Zealand, ministerial responsibility has tended to follow British practice. Ministers have resigned in cases of personal misconduct, but more rarely in cases of maladministration. Ministers have refused to resign in some cases when they have been asked to account for departmental errors. A famous case was Minister of Works Bob Semple, who refused to resign in 1944 over engineering failures in the construction of a railway tunnel. He was quoted as saying "I am responsible, but not to blame." Other departures from normal convention have included the refusal of a minister's resignation in the 1980s over compromised security of budget documents, and a minister resigning his portfolio (but not leaving Cabinet) over the 1995 Cave Creek disaster. ==United Kingdom==

It is currently unclear what individual action a minister ought to take when a civil servant within his department is guilty of maladministration. The formulation of some guidelines took place during the Crichel Down Affair in 1954 in which the Minister of Agriculture, Thomas Dugdale, resigned, despite an inquiry suggesting that all mistakes were made within his department without his knowledge and in some cases due to deliberate deceit by civil servants. Later details suggested that he resigned because he supported the civil servants' actions and because he disagreed with the government accepting the inquiry's conclusions. The government announced that ministers must defend civil servants who act properly and in accordance with policies set out by the minister. Furthermore, it was stated that "where an official makes a mistake or causes some delay, but not on an important issue of policy and not where a claim to individual rights is seriously involved, the Minister acknowledges the mistake and he accepts the responsibility although he is not personally involved." In 1982, Lord Carrington (then Foreign Secretary) and two other Foreign Office ministers resigned shortly after the invasion of the Falkland Islands. Later official reviews stated that, although there had been misjudgments within the Foreign Office, no responsibility attached to any individual within the government. However, in 1983, when 38 IRA prisoners broke out of the Maze prison, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, James Prior, did not resign, explaining that the break-out was not caused by any policy initiative originating from him. This latter position has become the norm in British politics. An exception might be Estelle Morris, who resigned as Secretary of State for Education in 2002, saying she had not done well enough after a scandal over A-level marking. Some recent resignations due to personal errors of judgment or impropriety include the resignation of Ron Davies, the Secretary of State for Wales, for sexual misconduct in 1998, and the resignation of Peter Mandelson, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, for failing to disclose a substantial loan by a Cabinet colleague in 1999. An argument put forward during the Scott Inquiry into the Arms-to-Iraq affair in the 1980s was a distinction between political responsibility and political accountability. ==See also==