Law and state coursework 1 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Law and state coursework 1 - Essay Example Thus in theory, a strong Parliament keeps the government in check. Whether this is true or not, however, has been the subject of lively, sometimes contentious, debate for more than a century. Marshall (1989 pp. 2-4) was of the opinion that the phrase â€Å"Collective responsibility† invokes in the first place that the Crown is advised by a collectivity. Collective responsibility is generally represented as one of the major conventions of the constitution. It involves three sets of practices. The first is the Confidence principle, which requires governments to resign or advise dissolution in case of defeats in the House of Commons (understandably, only defeats on specific motions of no confidence are now thought to compel this consequence). The second, the Unanimity principle, states that all members of the administration speak and vote together and as one in the House of Commons; and the third is the Confidentiality principle, which asserts that members of the administration are entitled to the ministerial prerogative to resist disclosure of information. This last principle has consistently been pleaded as the ground for restricting information that can be given b y civil servants to Parliamentary Select Committees, the press, and the public in general. According to Morley (1889, Marshall e. pp. 17-19), the doctrine of collective responsibility is the most important of four principal features of the British system of Cabinet government. The second principal feature is that the Cabinet is held answerable immediately to the majority of the House of Commons, and through them to the electorate. Thirdly, the Cabinet is selected exclusively from one party, which is the general rule, and which identifies the British Parliament as a ‘strong party’ system. Occasionally this rule is breached, but only on the occasion of some ‘uncommon, peculiar, and transitory