Individual ministerial responsibility

IMR

• Responsibility for departmental (political) failings AND personal failings

4 expectations of ministers

1. Obey law of land

2. Obey rules and conventions of Plmt

3. Have unimpeachable Financial Dealings

4. Act in accordance with unwritten moral code

3 aspects of a minister’s role

1. Represent their dept in Plmt and must not deliberately mislead it

2. Represent their dept at all times even in their private dealings

3. Are responsible for everything they could/should have reasonably known about w/in their departments even if they did not personally make the decision

1994 Committee for Standards in Public Life

• Ministers, civil servants and others in public roles are watched over by this body

Nolan Principles (7) that remove ‘unwritten moral code’ ambiguity

1. Selflessness

2. Integrity

3. Objectivity

4. Accountability

5. Openness

6. Honesty

7. Leadership

Ministerial Code

• Originated in 1992

• Convention that each PM publishes their own version

IMR’s enforcement

• Convention so at the hands of the PM

  • PM is judge, jury and executioner as they decide what it says, whether it has been breached and if there should be an investigation

Angela Rayner 2025

• Resigned as Deputy PM and SoS for Communities and Local Gov’t after underpaying stamp duty by £40,000 as she had received incorrect legal advice

• Had to lift a court order that was protecting her family’s privacy in order to comment

Rushanara Ali 2025

• Homelessness Minister

• She had evicted her tenants to sell the house but then relisted it for rent at £700 more expensive

• It wasn’t illegal but the gov’t was proposing a Renters Reform Bill to make it illegal

Andrew Gwynne 2025

• Was dismissed as Plmtary Under-SoS due to inappropriate, ageist and antisemitic WhatsApp messages

Louise Haigh 2025

• Resigned as Transport Secretary

• Had a criminal conviction for fraud in 2009 because she misreported a mobile phone she claimed had been stolen

• Breached ministerial code by failing to declare it even though it happened before she was in Plmt

Peter Mandelson 1998 and 2001

• Resigned as SoS for trade after not declaring a loan from a fellow MP

• Resigned again as SoS for NI after accusations of fast-tracking a passport application of an associate

Matt Hancock 2021

• Resigned as Heath Secretary after having an affair that broke social distancing guidelines that HE had created

Dominic Raab 2023

• Resigned as Deputy PM and Justice Sec after mistreating civil servants that were working for him

Priti Patel 2020

• Was found by a Cabinet Office inquiry to have bullied civil servants

  • Permanent Sec of Home Office also resigned due to her behaviour

• Johnson didn’t ask for her resignation and she stayed Home Sec until 2022 due to her popularity with C party members

  • Author of Cabinet Office inquiry resigned over this decision

Boris Johnson 2022

• Misled Plmt over Partygate but did not resign due to IMR

  • Instead only resigned after pressure from w/in C party

• Allegra Stratton (Downing Street Press Sec) resigned post-video leak about discussing how to mislead Plmt about Partygate

Tulip Siddiq 2025

• Resigned as Treasury Minister due to alleged links with assets and corrupt infrastructure deals with her aunt

Lord Carrington 1982

• Resigned as Foreign Sec after failing to recognise the threat to the Falkland Islands

Estelle Morris 2002

• Resigned as Education Sec after failing to achieve a rise in literacy levels and issues around A-Level marking by admitting she wasn't up to the job

Amber Rudd 2018

• Resigned as Home Sec after having ‘inadvertently misled the HoC’

• It was released that Windrush children were being threatened with deportation if they could not prove their right to stay and that the Home Office had a target for number of deportations

  • Home Affairs Select Committee exposed there were and Guardian was given emails that suggested Rudd had known about them

Chris Grayling

• ‘Failing Grayling’ is definitely incompetent and has made many widely publicised gaffes

  • Awarded a £14m contract to a ferry company with no ships

• Has never been sacked due to incompetence as would reflect badly on PMs so has been reshuffled

  • Transport Sec, Leader of HoC, Justice Sec, Minister for Employment

Gavin Williamson

• Didn’t resign or get sacked as Education Sec despite:

  • Terrible CAGs in 2020

  • U-turns over FSM and COVID closures

  • Failed to provide remote learning equipment for students from disadvantaged areas

• Supposedly ‘had something’ on BoJo (threatened to ‘not go quietly’ if he were sacked’ and was formerly gov’t Chief Whip

4 strengths of IMR

1. Ensures the buck stops with someone

2. Ensures civil servants are careful to not make a mistake and get their minister in trouble, which would further result in harm to their chances of future promotion

3. Facilitates work of opposition, e.g. Rudd was questioned by her L counterpart in the SC

4. Ensures high standards of personal conduct to prevent them being seen as hypocritical or out-of-touch

4 limits to IMR

1. Ministers rarely resign due to political (not personal) failures as would reflect badly on PM and gov’t

2. Ministers blame SPaDs and civil servants (Olly Robinson)

3. Gov’t more concerned with image — e.g. plebgate (2012 Chief Whip called a police officer he was a pleb) reflected badly on C party so he was asked to resign despite lack of conclusive evidence

4. Resign to take pressure off and then return (Mandelson!)

2 examples of ministers being held to an unfair moral standard

1. 1997 Ron Davies sacked as Welsh Sec after agreeing to go to dinner with a man he met on Clapham Common which led to him being mugged. His HoC pass was stolen and he had to resign because otherwise he was lying and he was also vulnerable to blackmail

2. 2024 Haigh resigned after an incident from a decade beforehand that she hadn’t corrected the police record from — fraud by misrepresentation despite her not actually monetarily benefiting