ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the history of ministerial responsibility and its centrality to the British constitution. The distinction has been most sharply delineated in relation to ministerial responsibility for executive agencies, but ministers and officials have increasingly stressed their 'accountability' obligations at the expense of their 'responsibility' requirements in all areas of government. The chapter offers a definition of accountability and responsibility, whilst also emphasising that accountability is a multilayered concept which can be informal or formal, can operate in a range of directions and can be conveyed through a number of 'codes of accountability'. A view echoed by the First Division Association: the arguments about reinventing government offered scant attention to the problems of accountability. The difference between accountability and responsibility is culpability. Whereas accountability involves the obligation 'to give a reckoning or account' responsibility also involves the 'liability to be blamed for loss or failure'. The chapter also examines the evolving mechanisms of accountability within the British Westminster model.
