The Complete Yes Minister

She has brought me a very difficult letter of complaint from one of the opposition front bench on a constituency matter; something to do with special powers for local authorities for land development in special development areas. I had no idea what it all meant or what I was supposed to do about it.

It turned out that I didn’t have to do anything about it. She explained that some of the facts were wrong, and other points were covered by statutory requirements so that I didn’t have any alternatives anyway.

This is the kind of Civil Service advice that makes a Minister’s life easy. No decision needed, not even an apology required. Nothing to do at all, in fact. Great.

I asked her to draft a reply, and she’d already done it. She handed it across my desk for me to sign. It was impeccable. I found myself wondering why they don’t make more Under-Secretaries like her – and realised that this was the moment to actually find out. So I asked her how many women are there at the top of the Civil Service.

She had an immediate answer to that question. ‘None of the Permanent Secretaries. Four out of one hundred and fifty odd Deputy Secretaries.’

I wondered silently if there are any that aren’t odd. Presumably not, not by the time they become Deputy Secretaries.

I asked her about her grade – Under-Secretary. As I expected, she knew the precise figure.

‘Oh, there’s twenty-seven of us.’

That seemed not so bad. ‘Out of how many?’ I asked.

‘Five hundred and seventy-eight.’

I was shocked. Appalled. I wonder why she wasn’t. At least, she didn’t seem to be, she was answering these questions in her usual bright, cheerful, matter-of-fact sort of way.

‘Doesn’t this appal you?’ I asked.

‘Not really,’ she smiled. ‘I think it’s comic. But then I think the whole Civil Service is comic. It’s run by men, after all.’

As a man who was about to devote himself to the cause of women’s rights, I felt able to rise above that one. I was on her side.

‘What can you do about it?’ I asked. She looked blank. I rephrased it. ‘What can I do about it?’ I said.

She looked me straight in the eye, with a cool clear gaze. Her eyes were a beautiful deep blue. And she wears an awfully nice perfume.

‘Are you serious, Minister?’

I nodded.

‘It’s easy,’ she said. ‘Bring top women from the professions and commerce and industry, straight into the top grades. The pay is quite good for women. There’s long holidays, index-linked pensions. You’d get a lot of very high-quality applicants.’

‘And they could do this job?’ I asked.

‘Of course.’ She seemed surprised at the question.’ I mean, with all due respect,³ if you can make a journalist MP into an instant Minister, why can’t you make a senior partner of a top legal firm into an Under-Secretary?’ [Hacker, of course, before he became a Minister, had been a journalist, editing the journal Reform – Ed.] ‘Most of the work here only needs about two O-Levels anyway,’ she added.

Bernard came in to remind me of my next appointment. He escorted Sarah out. ‘Bernard,’ I said.

‘Yes Minister?’ he replied as always. I’ve been trying to establish a closer personal relationship with him for nearly a year now, why does he persist in such formality?

‘I wish you’d call me Jim,’ I complained. ‘At least when we’re alone.’

He nodded earnestly. ‘I’ll try to remember that, Minister,’ he replied. Hopeless!

I waved the papers from my meeting with Sarah. ‘Sarah says this complaint is complete nonsense,’ I informed him. ‘And she’s done a reply.’

Bernard was pleased. ‘Fine, we can CGSM it.’

‘CGSM?’ I asked.

‘Civil Service code,’ he explained. ‘It stands for Consignment of Geriatric Shoe Manufacturers.’ I waited for the explanation. ‘A load of old cobblers,’ he added helpfully.⁴

I took the paper from him.

‘I am not a civil servant,’ I remarked loftily. ‘I shall write my own code on it.’

I wrote ‘Round Objects’ in the margin.

October 27th

Today I had a meeting with Sir Humphrey about equal opportunities. But I had taken care not to let on in advance – in his diary Bernard had written ‘Staffing’.

He came in, smiling, confident, benign, patrician, apparently without a care in the world. So I decided to shake him up a bit, then and there.

‘Humphrey,’ I began, ‘I have made a policy decision.’

He froze, half-way down into his chair, in a sort of Groucho Marx position, eyeing me warily with pursed lips.

[Presumably Hacker intended to say that Sir Humphrey eyed him warily, and that simultaneously he had pursed his lips – Ed.]

‘A policy decision, Minister?’ He recovered himself rapidly and pretended to be pleased with this piece of news.

‘Yes,’ I replied cheerfully. ‘I am going to do something about the number of women in the Civil Service.’

‘Surely there aren’t all that many?’ He looked puzzled.

Bernard hastened to explain.

‘The Minister thinks we need more.’