Individual ministerial responsibility is the convention that in their capacity as head of department, a minister is personally responsible for the actions and failings of their department. Under circumstances of gross failure in their department, a minister is expected to resign (and may be forced to do so by the prime minister), while their civil servants remain permanent and anonymous. This is relatively rare in practice, perhaps because administrative failure is of less interest to the media than personal scandal, and less susceptible to unequivocal proof. The closest example in recent years is perhaps Estelle Morris, who resigned as Secretary of State for Education and Skills in 2002 following severe problems and inaccuracies in the marking of A-level exams. The circumstances under which this convention is followed are not possible to define strictly, and depend on many other factors. If a minister's reputation is seen to be tarnished by a personal scandal (for example when it was luridly revealed that David Mellor had an extramarital affair) they very often resign. This often follows a short period of intense media and opposition pressure for them to do so. In general, despite numerous scandals, in Britain known cases of serious corruption (e.g. acceptance of bribes) are relatively rare in comparison with many other democracies.