In recent years there has been an increasing trend for ministers to resign over personal errors of judgement or for reasons relating to issues of personal morality. Examples of resignations under these circumstances include the following:
1. Ron Davis' (Secretary of State for Wales) resignation in 1999 following an apparent indiscretion on Clapham Common;
2. Peter Mandelson (Secretary of State for Trade and Industry) and Geoffrey Robinson (the Paymaster General) both resigned over an undisclosed loan by Mr Robinson to Mr Mandelson for a house purchase;
3. Beverley Hughes (Immigration Minister) resigned in 2004 following inadvertently misleading public statements regarding the lack of scrutiny of self-employed immigration applicants entering the UK;
4. David Blunkett (Home Secretary) resigned in 2004 over misleading statements relating to a visa application by his ex-lover's nanny;
5. David Laws (briefly Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 2010) resigned following the disclosure of an inappropriate parliamentary expenses claim.
6. Liam Fox (the Defence Secretary) resigned in October 2011 following allegations that he had breached the Ministerial Code in giving a personal friend significant access to the Ministry of Defence and allowing him to accompany him on overseas ministerial visits.
7. Chris Huhne (the Energy and Climate Change Secretary) resigned in February 2012 due to an ongoing criminal investigation into swapping speeding points with his ex-wife (for which he was subsequently imprisoned).
8. Maria Miller, the then Culture Secretary, resigned from Cabinet in April 2014 after reports of over-claiming of parliamentary expenses.