In 1954 Herbert Morrison said that a ‘minister is responsible for every stamp stuck on every envelope’ in their department. Using examples, critically discuss whether the above statement is accurate today

IntroductionHerbert Morrisons comments nominate an ideal of seeial right which his regimeal heirs and descendants pick up, in honor, aband whizd to a large degree. In de bust this reflects un utilize political realities and a change in the behaviour of politicians who strive to protect exclusive reputation at the expense of what was at a epoch a sacred ruler of Government1. The work to which Herbert Morrison each(prenominal)udes to arises often in the context of when a curate should forego which has undergone some marked transformations over the years as the weapon of Whiteh every(prenominal) has exploded and proponents have been invested in reputeive(prenominal) ministers non- incisional bodies, man corporations and other agencies much(prenominal) as quangos2 now complement ever development de small-armments. As Diane Longley &038 Norman Lewis observe the root of the normal stretch far grit before Morrisons quartetth dimension to the days of Dicey wh ere the liability to loss of portion was extended to all official acts3 which ever controled sectional maladministration to more dependable matters. The dominion, as a means of retention the executive branch of the government to account, has been just nowifiably depict as hollow, a ruling fiction 4 and leading inbuilt scholars have callight-emitting diode for reclaim in this rural bea as far cover song as the year 20005. Even back in 1956 Professor Finer cast dubiety upon its very existence in the screening of the Crichel cut out skirmish6. No such reform or replacement has ever arrived, however, and contempt nonable episodes such as the Hutton doubt, the hard cash for questions probes and the recent expenses scandal in Westminster no alternative theory or principle has surfaced7. The operation of the principle has also been seen as not aiding government answerableness only(prenominal) hindering it by m both commentators many a(prenominal) students of public administration, including the authors, have long taken the view that ministerial tariff/accountability (M.R.) as the ruling conference for avocation the executive to account is hollow. Indeed, operating at its most pernicious, it is a outline for the mutually-reinforcing progressive concealment of government action and public purposes.8This essay will focus on whether the principle of ministerial certificate of indebtedness, as described by Herbert Morrison, is still accurate in the political modality of 2012. In part 1 this essay will tonicity into the Crichel waste affair of 1937 to establish the alleged(a) convention and therefore in part 2 the Scott Report, which was commissioned after it emerged that Britain had sell arms to Iraq, will be analysed. The ineluctable demonstration is that Morrisons statement reflects a nobler and purer vision of politics than now endures and that the principle has been so eroded by time as to be virtually unrecognisable if indeed it existed in the first place. trigger 1 Crichel Down affairAs Bradley &038 Ewing point out the Crichel Down subroutine of 1937 is the acknowledged starting point in any discussion of ministerial duty9. farming area in Dorset, which was called Crichel Down, was acquired under compulsory buy powers10 by the Air Ministry in 1938 preliminary to the outbreak of war for a new bombing range11. Lieutenant Commander marten asked that the estate be sold back to his family (who had previously owned most of the land) solely what followed was, in the opinion of the subsequent inquiry setup to investigate the affair, muddle, inefficiency, bias and sad faith on the part of some officials named in the report12. In specific an inaccurate report was drafted by a junior courtly servant that led to the Ministry of Agriculture adopting a scheme which deprive the former owners of chastens in the land or as Wass succinctly puts it, bona fide applicants for the land had not been given the opport building blocky they had been promised to bid for a rental or for possession of the land13. Wass gameylights the two senior elegant servants determine by the inquiry who did attempt to cover their own tracks once the particulars were ap fosterThe one mistake on which everyone seized was the impropriety of the two master(prenominal) officials who, realising that applicants to rent or buy the land had not been given the opport unities they had been led to expect, desire to appear retrospectively to have considered their case. This was plain wrong and would have been a fitting subject for a mild critique by the Ombudsman, if he had existed at the time and had the case been referred to him. But it is pretty crown from the papers that, as yet if the applicants cases had been considered, the outcome, viz. a decision to continue to farm the unit as a single unit by a farmer of proven ability, would have been the same.14The end result was that the diplomatic minister of Agricult ure, Sir Thomas Dugdale, resigned and the two civil servants were locomote to other duties15. The underlying legacy of Crichel Down was that it is now cited as the last use of a ministers credenza of function for all the acts of his department16. In the subsequent debate in the business firm of Commons Sir David Maxwells Fyfe, the then Home Secretary, sought to clarify quadruple situations in which a take care moldiness vicariously accept responsibility to varying degrees for the actions or inactions of his civil servants ranging from where an explicit range is given to where action is taken by a civil servant of which the Minister disapproves and has no previous knowledge17. This continuum of responsibility did not contain any nominate of resignation and the topic be wed to circumstances there is no duty on a minister to resign when maladministration has occurred within his or her department18. The discover factors which influence a resignation are for the most part pol itical a fact which is corroborated by Professor Finer19 and Bradley &038 Ewings seminal work on constitutional law20.Part 2 Arms to IraqBy the convention supposedly crystallised in the aftermath of the Crichel Down affair the Ministers accountable for(p) for exporting arms to Iraq would have had to have resigned in the wake of the Scott Report into the affair in 199621. Ultimately there were no resignations despite a close balloting in the Commons during the debate on the report. The conclusions of the report were, however, devastating in purpose that there were numerous failings by ministers to turn back Parliament appraised of their arms exporting insurance policy and, fundamentally, they had misled Parliament, albeit not intentionally22. Instead the ministers involved managed to bunk into what Margaret Liu has called an accountability gap which exploits the definitions given to responsibility and accountability respectively23. As Liu explainsA minister is accountable to P arliament for what had occurred in his department without that implying personal blame on the part of a minister if things had gone wrong. By contrast, a minister is said to be amenable for broad policy, and the issues that he/she has been personally involved, not for all department affairs. In other words, the minister is not responsible for what is done by the civil serve up in the Next Steps say-so where he has delegated the accountability for administration from parent departments.24This relatively new artificial government note allows ministers to escape responsibility for actions in their department carried out by civil servants and finally leads, as Liu rightly observes, to potential areas of government for which no one is responsible to Parliament, fifty-fifty though a minister remains accountable25. Thus despite all of the furore created by the report the ministers were scourtually able to hang onto their jobs and there was to be no supreme sacrifice a la Sir Thoma s Dugdale in the Crichel Down affair. This distinction appears to have fuelled the practice of take Parliament and being creative with the truth to avoid liability in respect of departmental maladministration. As Liu points out mortal ministerial responsibility essentially involves the snobbish conduct of a minister, the ministers conduct of his/her department and vicarious acts of civil servants26. Personal conduct seems to be the exclusion with many ministers resigning because it was impossible to conduct their duties in the media glare27 just as Bradley &038 Ewing note there have been very few resignations by ministers taking vicarious responsibility for the errors of civil servants in their departments28. The level of culpability was high in the Arms to Iraq case and the fact that no minister lost their jobs is contemplative of modern political times where no minister resigns unless the matter is exceptionally atrocious or private conduct is preventing them doing their job s. As Longley &038 Lewis concludeIf the minister is indeed responsible for systems, then he is responsible for their reverse either directly or by dint of the identification of those who are. If this is not the case, then apparently ministerial responsibility is a myth. lento the effectiveness of the convention has been erodedScott whitethorn have been successfully defused in the party-political arena, moreover if his report is left to gather besprinkle when it is an indictment of the deep-seated failure of parliamentary government, then the fabled British system will deserve all the sentence which it is bound to receive.29ConclusionIn conclusion Herbert Morrisons statement was inaccurate even back in the political mood in which it was created a time when a minister would supposedly fall for the actions of any civil servant and would do the right thing by standing down30. As Professor Finer justifiably notes, the cases which predate the Crichel Down affair do not even lend s ubstance to the convention and the principle in fact relies upon factors such as the mood of the Prime Minister and the will of the minister concerned or else than an overriding sense of accepting responsibility for the actions of others31. Applied to the modern political climate the statement is wildly inaccurate with dissimilar commentators rightly alleging that it is a myth in the British constitution32. The Scott Report demonstrates the pliability of the principle well and the artificial distinctions between responsibility and accountability, inextricably linked, serve only to further consign the principle to the ashbin of history save in the most serious of cases. Now creativity is used in giving answers to Parliament and all responsibility is to be evaded until the eleventh hour. This is, as noted in the introduction, a rebuke of the growth of the apparatus of the state and the unelected power of ministers. Professor Finers tetrad categories are more realistic even in 201 2There are four categories of delinquent Ministers the fortunate, the less fortunate, the unfortunate, and the plain unlucky. later sinning, the first go to other Ministries the arcminute to Another Place the third just go. Of the fourth there are but twenty examples in a ampere-second33Bibliography JournalsFiner, E.S. (1956) The Individual Responsibility of Ministers customary politics 377Liu, Margaret L (2002) Ministerial Responsibility and complete uprightness Coventry Law 7(2) pp25-37 at p.29Longley, D &038 Lewis, Norman (1996) Ministerial Responsibility The Next Steps Public Law Autumn pp490-507Wass, Douglas (1988) The Mystery of Crichel Down Public Law Autumn pp473 475BooksBradey, AW &038 Ewing, KD (2007) themeal &038 administrative Law Pearson worldwideTomkins, Adam (1998) The Constitution After Scott Government Unwrapped Oxford University loo OxfordTurpin, Colin (1994) Ministerial Responsibility Myth or Reality? in J. Jowell and D. Oliver (eds.), The Changing Con stitution, (3rd ed), pp. 114-115