Member of parliament and the administration : case of the select committee on nationalized industries

This chapter seeks to illuminate the debate over the implications for ?accountability? of the Next Steps Initiative by an examination of the debate in Parliament over the delegation, by Ministers, of responsibility for answering certain parliamentary questions for written answer to the chief executives of executive agencies. In doing so, it seeks to separate the two issues of accessibility and accountability which have often been conflated, both accidentally and deliberately, in debates on this issue. It also seeks an explanation for the prominence of this issue in parliamentary debate given the relative insignificance of the questions involved both in terms of content and number. The explanation proposed is that the debate has, apparently unintentionally, for conflicting reasons and against the express wishes of many Members of Parliament from all parties, resulted in a constitutionally radical redefinition of a form of direct accountability to parliament which by-passes traditional notions of ministerial, as opposed to parliamentary, accountability.