The Complete Yes Minister

‘I see,’ he said coldly, ‘the government is to measure its success in column inches, is it?’

‘Yes… and no,’ I said with a smile.

But he was deeply concerned about my redraft of the draft report.

‘Minister,’ he said firmly, ‘the evidence that you are proposing to submit is not only untrue, it is — which is much more serious — unwise.’ One of Humphrey’s most telling remarks so far, I think. ‘We have been through this before: the expanding Civil Service is the result of parliamentary legislation, not bureaucratic empire building.’

I begin to think that Sir Humphrey really believes this.

‘So,’ I said, ‘when this comes up at Question Time you want me to tell Parliament it’s their fault that the Civil Service is so big?’

‘It’s the truth, Minister,’ he insisted.

He can’t seem to grasp that I don’t want the truth, I want something I can tell Parliament.

I spelled it out to him. ‘Humphrey, you are my Permanent Secretary. Are you going to support me?’

‘We shall always support you as your standard-bearer, Minister — but not as your pall-bearer.’

There seemed to be a vaguely threatening air about these remarks. I demanded to know what he was actually saying. As I was becoming more and more heated, he was becoming icier and icier.

‘I should have thought,’ he pronounced, in his most brittle voice with excessive clarity of enunciation, somewhat reminiscent of Dame Edith Evans as Lady Bracknell, ‘that my meaning was crystal-clear. Do not give such a report to a body whose recommendations are to be published.’

As always, he has completely missed the point. I explained that it is because the report is to be published that I am submitting the evidence. I, the Minister, am to be the judge of when to keep secrets, not the permanent officials.

I appeared to have silenced him completely. Then, after a rather long pause for thought, he enquired if he might make one more suggestion.

‘Only if it’s in plain English,’ I replied.

‘If you must do this damn silly thing,’ he said, ‘don’t do it in this damn silly way.’

February 2nd

On the way to Number Ten this morning Bernard showed me the agenda for Cabinet. To my horror, I was informed that Cabinet was due to discuss my proposal to close down the Land Registry — or what was described as my proposal! I’d never heard of it till that moment. It is a scheme to transfer residual functions to the Property Services Agency. The idea is to reduce the number of autonomous government departments, in which there has been a 9¾% rise. Bernard told me I’d initialled it. God knows when — I suppose it must have been in a red box sometime over the last few weeks but I don’t recall it. I’ve been working on the Think-Tank report and nothing else for the last week or more. Anyway, I can’t remember every paper I struggle through at one or two a.m. — in fact, I can hardly remember any of them. There has to be a better system than this.

Bernard assured me that I didn’t really need to know much about the proposal because his information on the grapevine, through the Private Office network, was that the proposal would go through on the nod.

[Regrettably, this situation was not as uncommon as the reader might suppose. Because of both the pressure of time and the complexity of much legislation, Ministers frequently had to propose measures to Cabinet that they themselves either had not read or did not fully understand. Hence the distinction sometimes drawn between Ministerial policy, i.e. policies about which the Minister has strong personal views or commitments, and Ministry policy, i.e. most policy — Ed.]

February 3rd

Today was the blackest day so far. Perhaps not only the blackest day since I became a Minister, but the blackest day since I went into politics.

I am deeply depressed.

However, I feel I must record the events of the day, and I’ll do so in the order in which they occurred.

It appears that Sir Humphrey went to the usual weekly Permanent Secretaries’ meeting this morning. It seems that he was ticked off by a couple of his colleagues when he revealed that I had written the draft report for the Think-Tank.

Humphrey complained to Bernard about my behaviour, it seems, and Bernard — who seems to be the only one I can totally trust — told me. Apparently Sir Frederick Stewart (Perm. Sec. of the FCO) actually said to Humphrey that once you allow a Minister to write a draft report, the next thing you know they’ll be dictating policy.