How Are Ministers Made Accountable
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How are ministers made accountable in parliament? (15 marks)
Accountability in parliament is the stem of the fundamentals of democracy; it is how we know that the ministers within the party we elect are doing their job correctly and to make sure the minister becomes responsible for any misdeeds or faults while practicing his/her profession. One of the most obvious forms of rendering out the faults of individual ministers is parliamentary scrutiny or to be more specific questions to ministers. Departments take it in turns to answer questions were ministers need to answer questions to see how well they know what they are doing and acknowledge the slipups in their plans. The idea of question time is that the opposition may seek out flaws in government policy. This is often viewed by many as an effective form of accountability as it isnt sporadic and happens Monday to Thursday for one hour.
Another form of accountability is well known for being a last resort, some feel it is not practiced as much as it possibly should (however this is a controversial matter). This is the concept of collective ministerial responsibility this states that the actions of the government must be taken collectively by the whole government, each individual minister should at least agree in public about the decisions made by the government and support them. If a minister feels that his/her principles do not allow them to take on a decision then he/she must resign. There have been a few resignations in the past years e.g. Claire Short resigned because she did not agree with the war in Iraq.
Another type of accountability ties in with the first two ideas about scrutiny and resignation. This ministers is when are faced with additional scrutiny from the public, the public Ministers also need to be personally responsible for their personal actions, this is because although we all make mistakes (for example cheating