ABSTRACT
As the received wisdoms of orthodoxy quoted above show, Parliament is traditionally supposed not to govern, nor to make laws, nor even to control the executive. Its role is narrowly defined as one of scrutinising the executive, checking and improving legislation, and debating issues of government. It is within these limits that the doctrine of ministerial responsibility to Parliament of the government collectively and ministers individually operates. In the previous chapter we have assessed the practical value of the doctrine and of the code of practice for access to government information in making ministers and the core executive accountable and open to MPs. Our conclusions were that the idea of ministerial responsibility acts more as a shield for ministers and the senior bureaucracy than a mechanism for either to be made responsible to Parliament; and that the code of practice is so defined as to allow the executive discretionary powers to withhold significant information from MPs, and that in particular the critical realm of ‘policy’, or the central workings of government, are totally withheld. This will largely remain the case under the Labour government’s proposal for a statutory freedom of information (FOI) regime. This chapter is the first of two which centre upon Parliament’s ability to make the executive accountable and open, as set out in DAC9 (see p. 337), which asks how extensive are Parliament’s powers to oversee legislation and public expenditure, to scrutinise the actions of ministers, departments and officials, and to hold ministers to account; and how effectively they are exercised in practice. In Chapters 13 and 14 we
concentrate on the parliamentary aspects of these questions. There are three dimensions to our inquiries:
• The first is structural: how far do relationships within Parliament-which revolve around the structures of party government and opposition-facilitate or hinder scrutiny and control of the executive?
