Resignations and the evolution of ministerial responsibility

Conventions evolve with the times. Ministerial responsibility is no different.

Canada’s ArriveCan scandal has revived a longstanding concern: is the constitutional convention of ministerial responsibility dead? When this question is asked, it’s usually in reference to the fact that ministers no longer seem to resign for significant failures within their departments. As David Moscrop suggests, if nobody resigns over ArriveCan, then ministerial responsibility is truly “dead and buried.”

This issue isn’t only a Canadian problem. Michael Gordon from University of Liverpool has a new article on this subject in the United Kingdom as well. Gordon argues that the Theresa May and Boris Johnston premierships demonstrate that the UK is now living with a convention of ministerial irresponsibility.

To my mind, what we’re witnessing is an evolution of the convention of ministerial responsibility. Ministers are no longer willing to resign for bureaucratic misdeeds or scandals. Ministers may resign if they are personally involved in an ethical lapse or scandal, but even then, most will wait until they’ve been ‘resigned’ by the Prime Minister. And as I argued here, this resignation will usually only happen after the government has exhausted other options and stalled for time.

Ministerial responsibility originated from the need to hold the Crown to account without laying blame or culpability on the monarch. Since the ‘King could do no wrong’, it was necessary to make someone else responsible for the Crown’s actions (see the fate of the Thomas Wentworth, 1^st Earl of Stafford or the South Sea Bubble crisis, as examples.) The Crown’s counsellors were ideal proxies. Since they advised the monarch, the Crown’s missteps could be blamed on their bad advice. Early on, this could lead to the counsellor’s execution. Later, impeachment was the preferred sanction. As Charles II observed: “My words are my own but actions are those of my ministers.”

As the monarch withdrew from the affairs of government in the 18^th and 19^th Centuries, and the executive grew in size, ministerial responsibility evolved. While the Prime Minister remained responsible for the Crown’s actions, the accountability of individual ministers centered on their responsibilities within government. Ministers were responsible for specific departments or portfolios and were individually accountable for those departments and portfolios. While ministers were not involved personally in all decisions related to their departments or portfolios, they were expected to be informed about the everyday goings on. And even if ministers couldn’t realistically stay on top of everything that was happening, they were still expected to resign if their departments or officials were embroiled in a scandal.

In effect, just as ministers had to take responsibility for the monarch’s missteps, whether the Crown was acting on the minister’s advice or not, ministers were now expected to be accountable for the mistakes of the bureaucracy, whether they knew about them or not.

In line with the idea of conventions as rules governing relations of power and exercises of authority, the expectation that ministers should resign for bureaucratic errors rested on the principle that every official act was done under the minister’s authority, and is therefore their responsibility. 

Ministers, however, are far less willing to accept this principle. As government has continued to expand, the notion that they should be responsible for everything done within their departments is losing traction. Although ministers still accept that they’re answerable for everything that happens within the bureaucracy, they’re no longer willing to be held to account, and certainly not to resign, for decisions and actions that they weren’t involved with or knew anything about. For today’s ministers, if bureaucrats break laws or act unethically, the blame and culpability should belong with the officials, not them. Put differently, the focus should be on firing or indicting the officials instead of asking ministers to resign.

Constitutional traditionalists understandably see this as an affront. Ministers are the conduits through which Parliament holds the executive to account. If they refuse to resign for major government failures or scandals, democratic accountability is weakened.

What we’re arguably witnessing, though, is the evolution of convention. As much as we might like to see conventions set in stone and applied rigorously, that’s not how they work. They’re meant to change over time as political actors renegotiate them to reflect contemporary considerations and realities. Once political actors no longer feel bound by a rule, moreover, we’re no longer dealing with a convention, but a non-binding custom.

Currently, the Canadian federal public service includes over 300,000 officials, while there are 40 Cabinet ministers. These 40 politicians are increasingly unwilling to take a political or career hit for the nefarious actions of any of these 300,000+ officials. We may find that perspective objectionable, but as this attitude continues to hold over time, and across governments of different partisan stripes, it'll be difficult to argue that the convention of ministerial responsibility hasn’t changed.

From my perspective, the rules surrounding the resignations and ministerial responsibility are now in a new phase. Ministerial resignations appear reserved for those instances where 1) ministers didn’t act when they knew there was a problem within their portfolio; or 2) the ministers themselves acted improperly. There may be instances where political or media pressure leads the Prime Minister to dismiss a minister without these conditions being met, but we shouldn’t be surprised if ministers don’t offer their resignation if they haven’t faced these circumstances.