Simon Heffer's view of the Constitution

Simon Heffer has written an interesting article in today's Telegraph in which he says that the idea of collective responsibility is being abandoned by the Coalition and as a result the Coalition is abandoning the constitution.

The difficulty with his argument is that, it seems to me, the Government of the day continues for so long as it has a support of a majority in Parliament (for which read, the House of Commons).  Ultimately, if the Government can still command that support when Ministers don't abide by the convention of collective responsibility in relation to one issue, then the Government continues, in our Parliamentary constitution.

Conventions are not binding; Parliament cannot bind its successors; Governments survive as long as they command the support of Parliament; these are 3 of the axiomatic rules of our constitutional settlement.  That a Government decides that in relation to a number of issues (currently they appear to include the following: the bill that permits a referendum on the voting system; and reform of our constituencies and the bill to change the way in which students at our universities are funded) that the convention will not apply is not, in my view, 'ripping up our constitution'.

There are precedents in the votes of conscience that were permitted in relation to, for example, the abortion debates, that can be cited in defence of that charge.  The strength (and weakness) of our constitutional settlement is that there are very few 'rules' that cannot be changed by a Parliament ... that is the essence of what is often called the Supremacy of Parliament.