The Complete Yes Minister

‘Got it in one, Humphrey,’ I replied with my most patronising smile.

‘But Minister,’ he smiled smoothly, ‘it takes time to do things now.’ And he smiled patronisingly back at me. It’s amazing how quickly he recovers his poise.

I’ve been hearing that kind of stuff for nearly a year now. It no longer cuts any ice with me. ‘Ah yes,’ I said, ‘the three articles of Civil Service faith: it takes longer to do things quickly, it’s more expensive to do things cheaply, and it’s more democratic to do things secretly. No Humphrey, I’ve suggested four years. That’s masses of time.’

He shook his head sadly. ‘Dear me no, Minister, I don’t mean political time, I mean real time.’ He sat comfortably back in his chair, gazed at the ceiling, and then continued in a leisurely sort of way. ‘Civil servants are grown like oak trees, not mustard and cress. They bloom and ripen with the seasons.’ I’d never heard such pretentious crap. But he was in full flow. ‘They mature like . . .’

‘Like you?’ I interrupted facetiously.

‘I was going to say,’ he replied tartly, ‘that they mature like an old port.’

‘Grimsby, perhaps?’

He smiled a tiny humourless smile. ‘I am being serious, Minister.’

He certainly was. Apart from being entirely serious about his own importance, he was seriously trying to use all this flimflam to get me to lose track of my new proposal – or, as I think of it, my new policy decision. I decided to go straight for the jugular.

‘I foresaw this problem,’ I said firmly. ‘So I propose that we solve it by bringing in top women from outside the Service to fill vacancies in the top grades.’

Humphrey’s face was a picture. He was absolutely aghast. The colour drained out of his face.

‘Minister . . . I don’t think I quite . . .’ His voice petered out as he reached the word ‘understood’.

I was enjoying myself hugely.

‘Watch my lips move,’ I said helpfully, and pointed to my mouth with my forefinger. ‘We . . . will . . . bring . . . women . . . in . . . from . . . out- . . . side!’ I said it very slowly and carefully, like a deranged speech therapist. He just sat there and stared at me, transfixed, a rabbit with a snake.

Finally he pulled himself together.

‘But,’ he began, ‘the whole strength of our system is that it is incorruptible, pure, unsullied by outside influences.’

I just can’t see the sense in that old chestnut and I said so. ‘People move from one job to another throughout industry, Humphrey – why should the Civil Service be different?’

‘It is different. The Civil Service demands subtlety . . .’

‘Discretion,’ said Bernard.

‘Devotion to duty,’ said Humphrey.

‘Soundness!’ said Bernard.

‘Soundness!’ repeated Sir Humphrey emphatically. ‘Well said, Bernard. Soundness.’ Bernard had clearly hit upon one of the key compliments in the Civil Service vocabulary.

[Bernard Woolley, of course, had an important vested interest in this conversation. If Hacker’s policy of bringing women in from outside were implemented, this might well have an adverse effect on the promotion prospects of more junior civil servants such as Woolley. And if women could be brought in to fill top jobs from outside, so could men. What, then, would Bernard Woolley’s prospects have been? – Ed.]

Sir Humphrey went on to explain that civil servants require endless patience and boundless understanding, they need to be able to change horses midstream, constantly, as the politicians change their minds. Perhaps it was my imagination, but it seemed to me that he was putting the word ‘minds’ in quotes – as if to imply, ‘as politicians change what they are pleased to call their minds’.

I asked him if he had all these talents. With a modest shrug he replied: ‘Well, it’s just that one has been properly . . .’

‘Matured,’ I interjected. ‘Like Grimsby.’

‘Trained.’ He corrected me with a tight-lipped smile.

‘Humphrey,’ I said, ‘ask yourself honestly if the system is not at fault. Why are there so few women Deputy Secretaries?’

‘They keep leaving,’ he explained, with an air of sweet reason, ‘to have babies. And things.’

This struck me as a particularly preposterous explanation, ‘Leaving to have babies? At the age of nearly fifty? Surely not!’

But Sir Humphrey appeared to believe it. Desperately he absolved himself of all responsibility or knowledge. ‘Really Minister, I don’t know. Really I don’t. I’m on your side. We do indeed need more women at the top.’

‘Good,’ I replied decisively, ‘because I’m not waiting twenty-five years. We’ve got a vacancy for a Deputy Secretary here, haven’t we?’

He was instantly on his guard. He even thought cautiously for a moment before replying.

‘Yes.’