The Complete Yes Minister

I asked the inevitable question.

‘Why didn’t you tell me about this?’

‘Because,’ came the inevitable answer, ‘you didn’t ask.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘thank God for the free press. Thank God for at least one brave, open and fearless journal in this country.’

Bernard started to remind me that I had previously described it differently, but I stopped him. However, I took the opportunity to explain to him that he really must sharpen up his political antennae. He needs to learn to adjust more flexibly to a developing situation.

He took my point, I think – I hope!

The next question inevitably raised by these revelations concerns the tapes and/or transcripts that must have been made of my bugged conversations. Where are they?

‘I imagine,’ said Humphrey carelessly, as if it didn’t really matter all that much, ‘that they must have been put into a report.’

‘And who got those reports?’ I wanted to know.

‘I imagine that the Home Secretary gets . . . got them.’ He corrected himself quickly. But not quickly enough.

‘Gets them?’ I shrieked. ‘You mean it’s still going on?’

He tried to pacify me, but without success. ‘No, Minister, not you, not now. Now he will be getting reports on current members of Her Majesty’s Opposition.’

The mechanics were still unclear to me. ‘Who gives these reports to the Home Secretary?’ I demanded.

He shrugged. ‘MI5, presumably.’

‘You seem very calm about all this.’

He smiled. He was really getting right up my nose, the complacent . . . [expletive deleted – Ed.]

I certainly wasn’t calm about it. I threw one of my real fits. I denounced the whole business. ‘It is horrifying,’ I insisted. ‘A British citizen – in my case, a distinguished British citizen – one who has dedicated his life to the service of his fellow countrymen . . . and all the time those gloating, faceless bureaucrats are listening to his every word. All his private calls. His rows with his wife. His shouting matches with his daughter. His private arrangements with his accountant.’ Perhaps I’d gone too far – maybe the room was bugged! ‘Not that I have anything I’d be ashamed to reveal, my life is an open book.’

‘Quite, quite,’ agreed both Humphrey and Bernard.

‘But it’s the principle of the thing!’

I stopped. I waited. The ball was in his court. Surely Sir Humphrey would have something to say. But no explanation or justification was forthcoming.

Sir Humphrey just sat there, head sympathetically inclined to one side, listening, for all the world like a Freudian psychoanalyst who has been sitting at the head of a couch listening to the rantings and ravings of a neurotic patient.

After he’d said nothing for quite a long time, I realised that he didn’t realise that the ball was in his court.

‘Why?’ I asked.

Sir Humphrey jumped, and focused his eyes in my direction. ‘Why what?’ he replied. ‘Why surveillance, or why you?’

‘Both.’

‘In any case,’ he smiled blandly, ‘it’s the same answer.’

My blood boiled. ‘Then why,’ I snapped, ‘did you split it into two questions?’

There was no reply to that.

[Sir Humphrey could hardly explain to Hacker that he did not want to risk answering a question that Hacker had not asked – Ed.]

Then Humphrey began his general explanation. ‘I should have thought it was perfectly obvious. Before the election it was rumoured that you might be appointed Secretary of State for Defence. If the PM were to consider giving you Defence, you can surely see that it would be in the national interest for MI5 to satisfy itself that you were not a security risk?’

‘But my privacy was invaded,’ I pointed out.

He smiled his smuggest smile. ‘Better than your country being invaded, Minister.’

I must say, I could see that point. There was a valid argument there.

But I was sure that Humphrey had never experienced the feeling that I was feeling. And democracy is about the feelings and rights of the individual – that’s what distinguishes a democracy from a dictatorship.

I said to him: ‘Have you ever been under surveillance, Humphrey?’

He was astounded. ‘Me?’

‘You. You, Humphrey.’

He got on to his highest horse. ‘I am a civil servant,’ he said, as if that absolutely closed the discussion.

‘So were Burgess and Maclean, and Philby,’ I observed.

He was rattled, but he swiftly produced a counter-argument. ‘They were not Permanent Secretaries! One becomes a Permanent Secretary only after a lifetime of personal responsibility, reliability and integrity. The most rigorous selection procedures winnow out all but the most upright, honourable and discreet of public servants.’