Individual ministerial responsibility no longer operates effectively. The clearest evidence is the long pattern of ministers refusing to resign for major departmental failures. Theresa May presided over six years of Home Office immigration failures that laid the groundwork for the Windrush scandal but did not resign as Home Secretary. Gavin Williamson kept his job through the 2020 A-level algorithm collapse. Boris Johnson became the first sitting PM to be fined for breaking the law and still did not resign over the breaches themselves. In each case the convention was visibly available and visibly ignored. Ministers stay when their PM defends them and a Commons majority shields them, and the convention has nothing to say about that political reality.
Write the rebuttal. Use Rudd 2018 (Windrush - misled Commons), Damian Green 2017, Liam Fox 2011 (Werritty), Suella Braverman October 2022 (security breach), Dominic Raab April 2023 (bullying inquiry), Lord Carrington 1982 (Falklands) as your evidence base. Finish with a one-sentence interim judgement that picks a side.
Collective ministerial responsibility has been fatally weakened. The convention has been formally suspended twice in living memory - by Wilson for the 1975 EEC referendum and by Cameron for the 2016 EU referendum - and outside those suspensions has been routinely broken without consequence. The leak culture under Johnson saw cabinet discussions appear in the Sunday papers within hours, while the Truss-Kwarteng October 2022 collapse saw cabinet ministers briefing openly against the PM within weeks of the mini-budget. Once a convention can be suspended at the PM's discretion and broken routinely without sanction, it has stopped being a convention and become a habit that ministers observe only when politically convenient.
Write the rebuttal. Use Robin Cook March 2003 (Iraq) as the clearest CMR-still-bites example, Suella Braverman November 2023 sacking by Sunak (PM enforcing the convention), Starmer's first year of cabinet discipline, and the argument that the two formal suspensions were limited to specific constitutional referendums. Finish with a one-sentence interim judgement.
The conventions of ministerial responsibility do ensure effective executive accountability. Both halves of the convention are widely understood, regularly invoked in Parliament, and produce resignations when triggered. The Ministerial Code has been strengthened repeatedly since 1992 and the Independent Adviser on Ministers' Interests has added a formal investigation route since 2006. The modern record - Rudd, Green, Patel, Raab, Braverman - shows that breach leads to consequence. The conventions are not perfect but they remain the central accountability mechanism between elections and they continue to bite.
Write the rebuttal. Use the May Home Office non-resignations 2010-16, Boris Johnson Partygate as PM not resigning, the resignation of Lord Geidt as Independent Adviser 2022 (showing PM interference), the leak culture under Johnson and Truss, and the argument that the conventions only work when the PM permits them to work. Finish with a one-sentence interim judgement.