The Complete Yes Minister

‘Why not?’ I asked.

Sir Humphrey rose from his chair and announced magisterially: ‘He that would keep a secret must keep it secret that he hath a secret to keep.’ Then he left the room.

I was interested in the quotation, which struck me as rather profound. ‘Who said that?’ I asked Bernard.

Bernard looked puzzled. He stared at me, and then stared at the doorway through which Sir Humphrey had just walked.

‘It was Sir Humphrey,’ he said.

[It is significant that Hacker was not at all shocked at the suggestion that he should conceal information from the Select Committee, or indeed tell lies to it. Such lies would be regarded in government circles as white lies. There are a number of issues about which a Minister automatically tells lies, and he would be regarded as foolish or incompetent if he told the truth. For instance, he would always deny an impending devaluation, or a run on the pound. And he would always give the impression that the UK had adequate and credible defences – Ed.]

I sat at my desk feeling utterly washed out after a night with British Airways and a day with the Civil Service, and gazed at the enormous brief that I had to master in one day.

‘Why,’ I wondered aloud, ‘are Ministers never allowed to go anywhere without their briefs?’

‘It’s in case they get caught with their trousers down,’ Bernard replied rather wittily. At least, I think it was wit, but it might just have been a lucky chance.

He had kept my diary free for the whole day, so we were not interrupted. It emerged, as we went through it, that the submission that I’d read on the plane was a rehash of the report the Department produced last year. And the year before. And the year before that. Ever since 1867 probably. I pointed out to Bernard that the first sentence was enough to cure anybody of any desire to read the thing: ‘The function of the DAA is to support and service the administrative work of all government departments.’

‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘that bit’s fascinating.’

I asked him how anyone could be fascinated by it.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘if you look back to the first report in 1868, when Gladstone set up this Department’s predecessor, you find that the first sentence is, ‘The Department is responsible for the economic and efficient administration of government.’

‘Ah,’ I said, ‘is that what it was for?’

‘Yes,’ said Bernard, ‘but it proved a tough remit. They were responsible for every bit of waste and inefficiency. I suppose Gladstone meant them to be. So when it got too hot they did the usual.’

‘What is “the usual”?’ I asked.

It emerged that ‘the usual’ in Civil Service terms is to secure your budget, staff and premises and then quietly change your remit. In 1906 they changed the first sentence to ‘The Department exists to further the efficient and economic administration of Government.’ This removed the responsibility.

In 1931 they got it down to ‘The Department exists to support all government departments in their pursuit of economic and efficient administration’ which pushed the responsibility on to other departments. And by 1972 they had got rid of the embarrassing notions of economy and efficiency, and since then it has said ‘The purpose of the DAA is to support and service the administrative work of all government departments.’ The last vestige of the Department’s real purpose removed in a mere one hundred and four years, and the Department itself one hundred and six times its original size.

I now see why Bernard is fascinated, but I still could hardly stay awake to the end of paragraph one. Perhaps it was just the jet-lag. Anyway, Bernard reminded me that the press will be there tomorrow – so I had no choice but to get down to it.

October 5th

I had my first experience of being grilled by a Select Committee today and I didn’t like it one bit.

It all happens in a committee room at the House, a large gloomy Gothic room with an air of Greyfriars school about it. I was made to feel a bit like Billy Bunter caught with his hands in someone else’s tuckbox.

Along one side of a long table sit about nine MPs with the Chairman in the middle. On the Chairman’s right is the secretary, a civil servant, who takes minutes. There are a few seats for the public and the press.

I was allowed to have Bernard with me, sitting slightly behind me of course, plus Peter Wilkinson and Gillian something-or-other from the Department. (Assistant Secretaries – Ed.)