The Complete Yes Minister

But the question is, how to find out if Roy knows any more without losing face myself. (Or losing any more face.) I’ve heard that drivers can be silenced with an MBE – can I get more information with the hint or promise of an MBE? But how would I drop the hint?

These are foolish and desperate thoughts. First I’ll try and get the truth out of my Permanent Secretary. Then I’ll try my Private Secretary. Only then will I turn to my driver.

It occurs to me, thinking generally around the problems that I’ve encountered in the last six months, that it is not possible to be a good Minister so long as the Civil Service is allowed complete control over its own recruitment. Perhaps it is impossible to stop the Civil Service appointing people in its own likeness, but we politicians ought to try to stop it growing like Frankenstein.

This whole matter of the Solihull project – which I am determined to get to the bottom of – has reminded me how incomplete is my picture of my Department’s activities. We politicians hardly ever know if information is being concealed, because the concealment is concealed too. We are only offered a choice of options, all of which are acceptable to the permanent officials, and in any case they force decisions on us the way magicians force cards on their audience in the three-card trick. ‘Choose any card, choose my card.’ But somehow we always choose the card they want us to choose. And how is it managed that we never seem to choose a course of action that the Civil Service doesn’t approve? Because we’re too busy to draft any of the documents ourselves, and he who drafts the document wins the day.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more the Department appears to be an iceberg, with nine-tenths of it below the surface, invisible, unknown, and deeply dangerous. And I am forced to spend my life manicuring the tip of this iceberg.

My Department has a great purpose – to bring administration, bureaucracy and red tape under control. Yet everything that my officials do ensures that not only does the DAA not achieve its purpose, but that it achieves the opposite.

Unfortunately, most government departments achieve the opposite of their purpose: the Commonwealth Office lost us the Commonwealth, the Department of Industry reduces industry, the Department of Transport presided over the disintegration of our public transport systems, the Treasury loses our money – I could go on for ever.

And their greatest skill of all is the low profile. These so-called servants of ours are immune from the facts of life. The ordinary rules of living don’t apply to civil servants: they don’t suffer from inflation, they don’t suffer from unemployment, they automatically get honours.

Jobs are never lost – the only cuts are in planned recruitment. I have found out that there were just two exemptions to the 1975 policy of a mandatory five per cent incomes policy – annual increments and professional fees: annual increments because that is how civil servants get pay rises, and professional fees on the insistence of parliamentary Counsel, the lawyers who drafted the legislation. Otherwise the legislation would never have been drafted!

So what have I learned after nearly six months in office? Merely, it seems, that I am almost impotent in the face of the mighty faceless bureaucracy. However, it is excellent that I realise this because it means that they have failed to house-train me. If I were house-trained I would now believe a) that I am immensely powerful, and b) that my officials merely do my bidding.

So there is hope. And I am resolved that I shall not leave my office tomorrow until I have got right to the bottom of this strange mystery surrounding the Solihull project. There must be some way of finding out what’s going on.

March 8th

Today was a real eye-opener.

I hadn’t seen Sir Humphrey for some days. We met, at my request, to discuss the Solihull project. I explained that I had talked rather enthusiastically about the project on the air, but I am now having second thoughts.

‘Any particular reason?’ asked Sir Humphrey politely.

I didn’t beat about the bush. ‘Humphrey,’ I said, ‘is everything all right with the Solihull project?’

‘I believe the building works are proceeding quite satisfactorily, Minister,’ he replied smoothly.

I patiently explained that that was not quite what I meant. ‘What is going on?’ I asked.

‘Building is going on, Minister,’ he reported.

‘Yes,’ I said trying to keep my temper, ‘but . . . something is up, isn’t it?’

‘Yes indeed,’ he replied. At last I’m getting somewhere, I thought. I relaxed.

‘What is up?’ I said.

‘The first floor is up,’ said Sir Humphrey, ‘and the second is almost up.’

I began to show my annoyance. ‘Humphrey, please! I’m talking about the whole basis of the project.’

‘Ah,’ replied my Perm. Sec. gravely. ‘I see.’

‘What can you tell me about that?’