Tag Archives: collective cabinet responsibility

Daniel Henry

Opinion: Cabinet Collective Responsibility and why we need to reform it

By Daniel Henry | Tue 17th June 2014 - 5:05 pm

clegg cameron rose gardenA lot has been written over the last few weeks about the coalition, how it has damaged our poll ratings and what we need to do to turn things around. I’d like to put the spotlight on Cabinet Collective Responsibility and how it’s not only damaged our party’s identity but has also helped damage the public’s view of coalitions in general.

Cabinet Collective Responsibility is the convention that members of the government, i.e. ministers, all have to suspend their own opinions and collectively hold the government line. If they want to publicly disagree with the government then they’re expected to resign. This may have made sense when one party ran the government but with a government formed from two different parties, with very differing views and identities, this has predictably caused a number of problems.

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  • David Warren
    This and Roderick Lynch's recent article regarding federal conference are music to my ears. We pride ourselves on being a party where members decide policy b...
  • Nick Baird
    One of my issues with Ed's proposals is that contrary to what members seem to think, he is not proposing to join *the* Customs Union, but to negotiate a new bes...
  • Jojo Godfrey
    I agree, Roderick. Having an equal vote means little if the cost of travel, accommodation and time off prevents members from being there. If we want our decisio...
  • Simon Lytton
    I totted up that it cost me over £1000 to attend the 2025 Autumn Conference in Bournemouth. That and the trend for uncontroversial motions in the chamber were ...
  • Nigel Walker
    Conference debates have rarely excited me, for the numbingly bureaucratic reasons you lay out. My last conference was indeed Spring 2023. That LDFP should be t...