The Complete Yes Minister

I agreed that the implications were indeed disturbing, which was why I had written a special paper for the PM. National transport policies are bound to have disturbing implications. He disagreed. He insisted that the Transport Policy will not have such implications.

‘It will,’ I said.

‘It won’t,’ he said. Such is the intellectual cut and thrust to be found at the centre of government.

‘Didn’t you read what it said?’ I asked.

‘What it said is not what it will be,’ he replied very firmly. ‘I thought perhaps you’d like to see this.’ And he handed me a newspaper, one of the London suburban weeklies.

It was the local paper from the PM’s constituency.

This was certainly news to me.

‘I’ve had no directive from the PM,’ I said.

‘You have now.’ What a curious way to get a directive from the PM. ‘I’m afraid this leak, whoever it comes from, is a verbatim report of a confidential minute dictated by the Prime Minister in Ottawa. So it looks as though the national transport policy will need some rethinking, doesn’t it?’

This leak was a skilful counter-move by the PM. I started to explain to Sir Mark that rethinking the policy would be difficult, but he interrupted me unceremoniously.

‘I think the PM’s view is that Ministers are there to do difficult jobs. Assuming that they wish to remain as Ministers.’

Tough talk. I got the message.

I hastened to assure him that if the policy needed rethinking then I would rethink it until it was well and truly rethought.

Before I left I asked him how the leak had got into the paper. The PM’s own local paper. He assured me that he had no idea, but that the PM’s office does not leak.

‘Shocking, though, isn’t it?’ he added. ‘You can’t trust anyone nowadays.’

August 23rd

Another meeting with Humphrey. We appeared to be back to square one.

I was somewhat downcast, as I still appeared to be landed with this ghastly job. To my surprise Humphrey was in good spirits.

‘It’s all going excellently, Minister,’ he explained. ‘We shall now produce the other kind of non-proposal.’

I asked him what he had in mind.

‘The high-cost high-staff kind of proposal. We now suggest a British National Transport Authority, with a full structure of Regional Boards, Area Councils, local offices, liaison committees — the lot. Eighty thousand staff, and a billion pounds a year budget.’

‘The Treasury will have a fit,’ I said.

‘Precisely. And the whole matter will certainly be handed back to the Department of Transport.’

I was entranced. I asked him to do me a paper with full staff and costing details and a specimen annual budget.

He was way ahead of me. He immediately produced the very document from his folder. ‘And there’s a one-page summary on the front,’ he smiled smugly. Well, he was entitled to be smug!

I told him he was wonderful. He told me it was nothing.

I sat back and glanced through the proposal. It was splendid stuff.

‘My goodness,’ I reflected, ‘if the press were to get hold of this… eh?’

Humphrey smiled. ‘They’ll soon be setting up another leak enquiry.’

Bernard was immediately anxious. ‘Not really?’

‘Bound to.’

‘But… wouldn’t that be embarrassing?’

I was surprised to see that Bernard didn’t know the rules of the leak enquiry game. Leak enquiries are never embarrassing because they never actually happen. Leak enquiries are for setting up, not for actually conducting. Members may be appointed, but they hardly ever meet more than once. They certainly never report.

I asked Bernard, ‘How many leak enquiries can you recall that named the culprit?’

‘In round figures,’ added Humphrey.

Bernard thought for a moment. ‘Well, if you want it in round figures…’ He thought again. ‘None.’

The right answer. They can’t report. For two reasons:

If the leak came from a civil servant it’s not fair to publish it. The politicians are supposed to take the rap, that’s what they’re there for.

If the leak came from a politician it’s not safe to publish it, because he will then promptly disclose all the other leaks he knows of that came from his Cabinet colleagues.

I explained all this to Bernard.

Then Humphrey chimed in. ‘There’s a third reason. The most important of all. The main reason why it’s too dangerous to publish the results of an enquiry is because most leaks come from Number Ten. The ship of state is the only ship that leaks from the top.’

Humphrey was quite right, of course. Since the problem, more often than not, is a leaky PM — as in this case — it’s not easy to get the evidence and impossible to publish it if you do.

And by a curious coincidence, a journalist arrived to see me this very morning, shortly after our meeting. Humphrey, most considerately, left a spare copy of our latest high-cost proposal lying around on my desk. I’m awfully absent-minded, I’m always leaving bits of paper lying around, forgetting where I put them — the upshot was that after the journalist had left my office I couldn’t find my spare copy anywhere. Extraordinary!

August 25th

It all came to a head today.