On ministerial responsibility

By R Nadeswaran, The Sun 

DEPENDING on which newspaper you read, Chris Huhne is the best secretary of state for environment and climate change the UK ever has had. But when he left his wife Vicky Pryce of 27 years for his aide Carina Trimingham, things seem to have gone awry. Hell, they say, has no fury like a woman scorned. Huhne, his estranged wife claimed, asked her to accept the penalty for a speeding ticket he collected in 2003. There has been no prosecution yet but the police have passed on their investigations to the director of public prosecutions.

In the past, ministers by convention have submitted their resignations if they had broken the law or had put the government in an embarrassing situation for failings within departments under their portfolios. Under the Westminster system, this is seen to guarantee that an elected official is answerable for every single government decision. It is also important to motivate ministers to scrutinise the activities within their departments. One rule coming from this principle is that each cabinet member answers for his or her own ministry in parliament.

The reverse of ministerial responsibility is that civil servants are not supposed to take credit for the successes of their department, allowing the government to claim them.

Although it may sound unfair, this doctrine demands that if waste, corruption, or any other misbehaviour is found to have occurred within a ministry, the minister is responsible even if the minister had no knowledge of the actions.

A research paper from the House of Commons states: “A minister is ultimately responsible for all actions by a ministry. Even without knowledge of an infraction by subordinates the minister approved the hiring and continued employment of those civil servants. If misdeeds are found to have occurred in a ministry the minister is expected to resign. It is also possible for a minister to face criminal charges for malfeasance under their watch.”

The archives in parliament are full of episodes, articles, stories and accounts of a string of ministers who had to send their resignation letters to the prime minister for failing to account for their conduct or that of a subordinate.

One of the most talked about case is that of junior education minister, Estelle Morris in 2002. She quit not because of personal scandal or personal agreement but she pledged to do so if the government failed to meet its targets for literacy and numeracy.

From the Hansard, this is the exchange that took place in the house:

Conservative shadow education secretary, (David) Willetts: Will the minister commit herself to the secretary of state’s pledge to resign if the government do not reach their literacy and numeracy targets by 2002?

Morris: Of course I will; I have already done so. Indeed, I generously commit the under-secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Mr Clarke) too. We speak with one voice. The Hon.

Gentleman’s question is a reflection of what life was like under teams of Conservative ministers, when a secretary of state would promise to resign but the rest of the team would not go.

The material on Reginald Maudling who resigned in 1972 makes interesting reading. Not in the cabinet (yet) six years earlier, he was made director in a company owned by architect John Poulson. Maudling helped obtain lucrative contracts. When Poulson was subject to a bankruptcy hearing, bribe payments and his connections to Maudling became public knowledge.

He quit and said: “As home secretary I was officially police authority for the metropolis, and was responsible for the Metropolitan Police. It seemed to me quite clear that I could not continue to hold that responsibility while the Met were investigating, with a view to possible prosecution, the activities of a man with whom I had had a business association. I had no option but to resign, which I did.”

In later years, Tony Blair’s one-time spin doctor Peter Mandelson resigned on two occasions. In late 1998, he resigned after it emerged that he got a loan from the paymaster general, Geoffrey Robinson, to buy a house. The media dug up several stories concerning the financial conduct of Robinson and oversight of these by Mandelson.

In his letter of resignation, Mandelson accepted that “it was necessary for ministers not only to uphold high standards in public life but also to be ‘seen to do so’.”

He returned to the cabinet a year later but had to resign again two years later for alleged improprieties. The Observer charged that he had called the immigration minister to assist an Indian businessman, Srichand Hinduja to obtain British citizenship. Srichand and his brother had donated £1 million to sponsor part of the Millennium Dome when Mandelson was in charge of the project in 1998. In 2001, an official inquiry exonerated Mandelson by which time he declared he would not want to be in the cabinet again.

In Malaysia, one of the earliest cases of a minister having to resign in unusual circumstances was in the sixties when the then Education Minister Abdul Rahman Talib submitted his resignation letter after he was unsuccessful in a defamation suit. PPP leader D. R. Seenivasagam had brought up in Parliament, where he enjoyed privilege, improprieties committed by the minister. Seenivasagam accepted the challenge to repeat the remarks outside and was unsuccessfully sued by Abdul Rahman.

The other minister who resigned was Datuk Seri Dr Chua Soi Lek who quit as health minister in 2008 over a sex video featuring him.

While we embrace the Westminster system, history may have forgotten some doctrines and the saga of Abdul Rahman Talib v D. R. Seenivasagam and Chua.

R. Nadeswaran concedes that since it is a doctrine and not a law, it would be difficult to compel individuals to do the honourable thing. He is theSun’s UK correspondent based in London and can be reached at: citizen-nades@thesundaily.com