# Ministerial Responsibility Notes on the relationship between ministers and the bureaucracy — including themes like accountability, overlapping portfolios, political-administrative boundaries, and matrix-style governance. ## Entries **14/03/2025**: **Ministerial responsibility is holding back collaboration**. In a [column](https://theconversation.com/keir-starmers-civil-service-reforms-what-is-mission-led-government-and-why-is-it-so-hard-to-achieve-252230) published in _The Conversation_ on March 14, 2025, Professor Patrick Diamond (Queen Mary University of London) argued that the traditional doctrine of ministerial responsibility in the UK needs to be reconsidered. He explains that the persistence of this principle reinforces departmental silos, since ministers are held individually accountable for the budgets and outcomes of their specific departments. This structure makes cross-departmental collaboration difficult, even when complex, long-term challenges demand joined-up responses. According to Diamond, if the Starmer government is serious about implementing mission-led government, it must confront the constitutional foundations of the UK civil service and rethink who should be publicly accountable for delivery (potentially shifting some of that responsibility from ministers to senior civil servants).