The Complete Yes Minister

I suggested that, although Peter was a frightfully good chap and had probably done a frightfully good job on it in one way, there was a danger that the speech might prove frightfully boring for the audience.

Sir Humphrey agreed instantly. He thought that it would bore the pants off the audience, and it must have been ghastly to have to sit through it.

Nonetheless, he explained to me that it was an excellent speech. I learned that speeches are not written for the audience to which they are delivered. Delivering the speech is merely the formality that has to be gone through in order to get the press release into the newspapers.

‘We can’t worry about entertaining people,’ he explained to me. ‘We’re not scriptwriters for a comedian – well, not a professional comedian, anyway.’

He emphasised that the value of the speech was that it said the correct things. In public. Once that speech has been reported in print, the Minister is committed to defending the Civil Service in front of Select Committees.

I sprang to the Minister’s defence, and said that he defends us anyway. Sir Humphrey looked at me with pity and remarked that he certainly does so when it suits him – but, when things go wrong, a Minister’s first instinct is to rat on his department.

Therefore, the Civil Service when drafting a Minister’s speech is primarily concerned with making him nail his trousers to the mast. Not his colours, but his trousers – then he can’t climb down!

As always, Sir Humphrey’s reasoning proved to be correct – but, as was so often the case, he reckoned without Hacker’s gift for low cunning.

[Hacker’s diary continues – Ed.]

October 4th

I got back from Washington today. The visit was quite a success on the whole though I must say my speech didn’t exactly thrill them. I mustn’t leave speeches to the Department – they give me very worthy things to say but they’re always so bloody boring.

I’ve been met by a huge backlog of work, piles of red boxes, half a ton of cabinet papers, hundreds of memos and minutes and submissions to catch up on.

And I doubt if I can ever really catch up on it because tomorrow I go in front of a Select Committee and I’ve got to try to read the redrafted paper on Establishment levels beforehand. Not only read it, but understand it. And not only understand it, but remember it. And it’s been written by an Under-Secretary – therefore it’s not in English, but in Under-Secretaryese.

Still, at least the press did report my speech, so that’s all right.

Sir Humphrey popped in to welcome me home, and to brief me about the Select Committee.

‘You do realise the importance of this hearing, don’t you Minister?’

‘Of course I do, Humphrey. The press will be there,’ I explained.

[Like many politicians, Hacker did not seem to believe in his own existence unless he was reading about himself in the newspapers – Ed.]

‘It’s not just a question of the press,’ he said. ‘This is a scrutiny of the Department’s future operation. If we were to emerge from the hearing as extravagant or incompetent . . .’

I interrupted him with a penetrating question. ‘Are we extravagant or incompetent?’

‘Of course not,’ he replied with considerable indignation. ‘But there are hostile MPs on the Committee. Especially the member for Derbyshire East.’

I hadn’t realised that Betty Oldham was on the Committee.

Humphrey handed me a thick folder full of papers, with red and yellow and blue tags. ‘I urge you to master this brief, Minister,’ he said, and told me to ask if I found any problems.

I was fed up. I’m tired and jet-lagged today. I told him that I didn’t want another brief on the Select Committee, I only just mastered one on the plane.

‘What was in it?’ he asked.

That was a bit embarrassing. I couldn’t quite remember. I explained that it’s rather hard to concentrate on the plane, as they keep trying to serve you drinks and show you movies and wake you up.

‘I’m sure it’s frightfully difficult to concentrate if you keep being woken up, Minister,’ he said sympathetically. He added that this was the first and only brief containing possible questions from the Committee, all with the appropriate answers carefully presented to give the Department’s position.

‘Are they all absolutely accurate?’ I wanted to know.

‘It is carefully presented to give the Department’s position,’ he replied carefully.

‘Humphrey,’ I explained equally carefully. ‘These Select Committees are very important. I can’t be seen to mislead them.’

‘You will not be seen to mislead them.’

I wasn’t satisfied. I began to suspect that the brief was not strictly honest. I pressed him further.

‘Is it the truth?’

‘The truth and nothing but the truth,’ he assured me.

‘And the whole truth?’

‘Of course not, Minister,’ he replied with some impatience.

I was confused. ‘So we tell them we’re keeping some things secret, do we?’

He shook his head and smiled. ‘Indeed not.’