The Complete Yes Minister

by Jonathan Lynn

  This is a most interesting insight into one of the Civil Service’s favourite devices. In future I’ll know what is really meant by a departmental enquiry. Even a full departmental enquiry. That would presumably mean that an even greater mass of no evidence had been unearthed for the occasion.

  However I had to deal with the matter in hand, namely that I had agreed to an independent enquiry. ‘Couldn’t we,’ I suggested thoughtfully, ‘get an independent enquiry to find no evidence?’

  ‘You mean, rig it?’ enquired Sir Humphrey coldly.

  This man’s double standards continue to amaze me.

  ‘Well… yes!’

  ‘Minister!’ he said, as if he was deeply shocked. Bloody hypocrite.

  ‘What’s wrong with rigging an independent enquiry if you can rig an internal one, I should like to know?’ Though I already know the answer — you might get caught rigging an independent enquiry.

  ‘No, Minister, in an independent enquiry everything depends on who the Chairman is. He absolutely has to be sound.’

  ‘If he’s sound,’ I remarked, ‘surely there’s a danger he’ll bring it all out into the open?’

  Sir Humphrey was puzzled again. ‘No, not if he’s sound,’ he explained. ‘A sound man will understand what is required. He will perceive the implications. He will have a sensitive and sympathetic insight into the overall problem.’

  He was suggesting that we rig it, in fact. He just likes to wrap it up a bit.

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘So “sound” actually means “bent”?’

  ‘Certainly not!’ He was too quick with his denial. Methinks Sir Humphrey doth protest too much. ‘I mean,’ he tried again, ‘a man of broad understanding…’

  I decided to short-circuit the process by making some suggestions.

  ‘Then what about a retired politician?’

  ‘… and unimpeachable integrity,’ added Humphrey.

  ‘Oh I see.’ I paused to think. ‘What about an academic or a businessman?’

  Sir Humphrey shook his head.

  ‘Okay,’ I said, knowing that he had someone in mind already. ‘Out with it. Who?’

  ‘Well, Minister, I thought perhaps… a retired civil servant.’

  I saw his point. ‘Good thinking, Humphrey.’ It’s wonderful what years of training can do for you!

  ‘Sir Maurice Williams could be the man,’ he went on.

  I wasn’t too sure about this. ‘You don’t think he might be too independent?’

  ‘He’s hoping for a peerage,’ said Humphrey quietly, with a smile. He appeared to think he was producing an ace from up his sleeve.

  I was surprised. ‘This won’t give him one, will it?’

  ‘No, but the right finding will give him a few more Brownie points.’

  Brownie points. This was a new concept to me. Humphrey explained that they all add up until you get the badge. This seems to make sense.

  ‘Right,’ I said decisively. ‘Sir Maurice it is.’ Thank God I find it so easy to take decisions.

  ‘Thank you, Brown Owl,’ smiled Humphrey, and left the room. He’s really quite a pleasant fellow when he gets his way, and perhaps his idea will get us out of the embarrassment of an independent enquiry actually revealing anything — whether it be something we didn’t know ourselves and should have known, or something we knew perfectly well and didn’t want others to know we had known.

  Of course, I realise on reflection that there is a third, and more real, possibility — that an independent enquiry would reveal something that Humphrey knew and I didn’t know and that he didn’t want me to know and that I would look an idiot for not knowing.

  Like what happened yesterday, in other words.

  So perhaps it’s just as well to follow his advice, until the day dawns when I know some embarrassing information that he doesn’t.

  March 17th

  A long meeting with Bernard Woolley today.

  First of all, he was concerned about the Cuban refugees. Naturally. I’m concerned about them too. There’s a whole row brewing in Parliament and the press about the government’s refusal to help them.

  I tried to point out that it’s not my fault the Treasury won’t give us the cash.

  I can’t beat the Treasury. No one can beat the Treasury.

  I’ve decided to do nothing about the refugees because there’s nothing I can do. However, Bernard and I had a more fruitful and revealing conversation about the new St Edward’s Hospital that Roy had tipped me off about yesterday. It seemed at first as though Roy was misinformed.

  ‘You asked me to find out about that alleged empty hospital in North London,’ began Bernard.

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, as I warned you, the driver’s network is not wholly reliable. Roy has got it wrong.’

  I was very relieved. ‘How did you find out this good news?’ I asked.

  ‘Through the Private Secretaries’ network.’

  This was impressive. Although the Private Secretaries’ network is sometimes a little slower than the drivers’ network, it is a great deal more reliable — in fact almost one hundred per cent accurate.

  ‘And?’

  Bernard explained that at this hospital there are only 342 administrative staff. The other 170 are porters, cleaners, laundry workers, gardeners, cooks and so forth.

  This seemed a perfectly reasonable figure. So I asked how many medical staff.

  ‘Oh, none of them,’ replied Bernard casually, as if that were perfectly obvious in any case.

  I wasn’t sure I’d heard right. ‘None?’ I asked, cautiously.

  ‘None.’

  I decided to clarify a thing or two. ‘We are talking about St Edward’s Hospital, aren’t we, Bernard?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he answered cheerfully. ‘It’s brand-new, you see,’ he added as if that explained everything.

  ‘How new?’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it was completed eight months ago, and fully staffed, but unfortunately there were government cutbacks at that time and there was, consequently, no money left for the medical services.’

  My mind was slowly boggling. ‘A brand-new hospital,’ I repeated quietly, to make sure I had not misheard, ‘with five hundred administrative staff and no patients?’

  I sat and thought quietly for a few moments.

  Then Bernard said helpfully, ‘Well, there is one patient, actually, Minister?’

  ‘One?’ I said.

  ‘Yes — the Deputy Chief Administrator fell over a piece of scaffolding and broke his leg.’

  I began to recover myself. ‘My God,’ I said. ‘What if I’d been asked about this in the House?’ Bernard looked sheepish. ‘Why didn’t I know? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I didn’t know either.’

  ‘Why didn’t you know? Who did know? How come this hasn’t got out?’

  Bernard explained that apparently one or two people at the DHSS knew. And they have told him that this is not unusual — in fact, there are several such hospitals dotted around the country.

  It seems there is a standard method of preventing this kind of thing leaking out. ‘Apparently it has been contrived to keep it looking like a building-site, and so far no one has realised that the hospital is operational. You know, scaffolding and skips and things still there. The normal thing.’

  I was speechless. ‘The normal thing?’ I gasped. [Apparently, not quite speechless — Ed.]

  ‘I think…’ I was in my decisive mood again, ‘… I think I’d better go and see it for myself, before the Opposition get hold of this one.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Bernard. ‘It’s surprising that the press haven’t found out by now, isn’t it?’

  I informed Bernard that most of our journalists are so amateur that they would have grave difficulty in finding out that today is Thursday.

  ‘It’s actually Wednesday, Minister,’ he said.

  I pointed to the door.

  [The following Friday Sir Humphrey Appleby met Sir Ian Whitchurch, Permanent Sec
retary of the Department of Health and Social Security, at the Reform Club in Pall Mall. They discussed St Edward’s Hospital. Fortunately, Sir Humphrey made a note about this conversation on one of his special pieces of margin-shaped memo paper. Sir Humphrey preferred to write in margins where possible, but, if not possible, simulated margins made him feel perfectly comfortable — Ed.]

  Ian was understandably concerned about Hacker’s sudden interest in St Edward’s Hospital.

  [We can infer from this note that Mr Bernard Woolley — as he then was — mentioned the matter of St Edward’s Hospital to Sir Humphrey, although when we challenged Sir Bernard — as he now is — on this point he had no recollection of doing so — Ed.]

  I explained that my Minister was greatly concerned that the hospital contained no patients. We shared a certain sense of amusement on this point. My Minister was making himself faintly ridiculous. How can a hospital have patients when it has no nursing staff?

  Ian quite rightly pointed out that they have great experience at the DHSS in getting hospitals going. The first step is to sort out the smooth-running of the place. Having patients around would be no help at all — they’d just get in the way. Ian therefore advised me to tell Hacker that this is the run-in period for St Edward’s.

  However, anticipating further misplaced disquiet in political circles, I pressed Ian for an answer to the question: How long is the run-in period going to run? I was forced to refer to my Minister’s agreeing to a full independent enquiry.

  Ian reiterated the sense of shock that he had felt on hearing of the independent enquiry. Indeed, I have no doubt that his shock is reflected throughout Whitehall.

  Nevertheless, I was obliged to press him further. I asked for an indication that we are going to get some patients into St Edward’s eventually.

  Sir Ian said that if possible, we would. He confirmed that it is his present intention to have some patients at the hospital, probably in a couple of years when the financial situation has eased up.

  This seems perfectly reasonable to me. I do not see how he can open forty new wards at St Edward’s while making closures elsewhere. The Treasury wouldn’t wear it, and nor would the Cabinet.

  But knowing my Minister, he may not see things in the same light. He may, simply because the hospital is treating no patients, attempt to shut down the whole place.

  I mentioned this possibility to Ian, who said that such an idea was quite impossible. The unions would prevent it.

  It seemed to me that the unions might not yet be active at St Edward’s, but Ian had an answer for that — he reminded me of Billy Fraser, the fire-brand agitator at Southwark Hospital. Dreadful man. He could be useful.

  Ian’s going to move him on, I think. [Appleby Papers 19/SPZ/116]

  [Perhaps we should point out that Hacker would not have been informed of the conversation described above, and Sir Humphrey’s memo was made purely as a private aide-mémoire — Ed.]

  March 22nd

  Today I had a showdown with Humphrey over Health Service Administration.

  I had a lot of research done for me at Central House [Hacker’s party headquarters — Ed.] because I was unable to get clear statistics out of my own Department. Shocking!

  They continually change the basis of comparative figures from year to year, thus making it impossible to check what kind of bureaucratic growth is going on.

  ‘Humphrey,’ I began, fully armed with chapter and verse, ‘the whole National Health Service is an advanced case of galloping bureaucracy.’

  Humphrey seemed unconcerned. ‘Certainly not,’ he replied. ‘Not galloping. A gentle canter at the most.’

  I told him that instances of idiotic bureaucracy flood in daily.

  ‘From whom?’

  ‘MPs,’ I said. ‘And constituents, and doctors and nurses. The public.’

  Humphrey wasn’t interested. ‘Troublemakers,’ he said.

  I was astonished. ‘The public?’

  ‘They are some of the worst,’ he remarked.

  I decided to show him the results of some of my researches. First I showed him a memo about stethoscopes. [As luck would have it, Hacker kept copies of all the memos to which he refers in his diary. These give us a fascinating insight into the running of the National Health Service in the 1980s — Ed.]

  Sir Humphrey saw nothing strange in this and commented that if a supply of longer tubes was available it was right and proper to make such an offer.

  Bernard then went so far as to suggest that it could save a lot of wear and tear on the doctors — with sufficiently long tubes for their stethoscopes, he suggested, they could stand in one place and listen to all the chests on the ward.

  I hope and pray that he was being facetious.

  Then I showed Humphrey the memos from St Stephen’s about toilet rolls and the mortuary.

  Sir Humphrey brushed these memos aside. He argued that the Health Service is as efficient and economical as the government allows it to be.

  So I showed him a quite remarkable document from the Director of Uniforms in a Regional Health Authority:

  Humphrey had the grace to admit he was amazed by this piece of nonsense. ‘Nice work if you can get it,’ he said with a smile.

  I saved my trump card till last. And even Humphrey was concerned about the Christmas dinner memo:

  Humphrey did at least admit that something might be slightly wrong if we are paying people throughout the NHS to toil away at producing all this meaningless drivel. And I learned this morning that in ten years the number of Health Service administrators has gone up by 40,000 and the number of hospital beds has gone down by 60,000. These figures speak for themselves.

  Furthermore the annual cost of the Health Service has gone up by one and a half billion pounds. In real terms!

  But Sir Humphrey seemed pleased when I gave him these figures. ‘Ah,’ he said smugly, ‘if only British industry could match this growth record.’

  I was staggered! ‘Growth?’ I said. ‘Growth?’ I repeated. Were my ears deceiving me? ‘Growth?’ I cried. He nodded. ‘Are you suggesting that treating fewer and fewer patients so that we can employ more and more administrators is a proper use of the funds voted by Parliament and supplied by the taxpayer?’

  ‘Certainly.’ He nodded again.

  I tried to explain to him that the money is only voted to make sick people better. To my intense surprise, he flatly disagreed with this proposition.

  ‘On the contrary, Minister, it makes everyone better — better for having shown the extent of their care and compassion. When money is allocated to Health and Social Services, Parliament and the country feel cleansed. Absolved. Purified. It is a sacrifice.’

  This, of course, was pure sophism. ‘The money should be spent on patient care, surely?’

  Sir Humphrey clearly regarded my comment as irrelevant. He pursued his idiotic analogy. ‘When a sacrifice has been made, nobody asks the Priest what happened to the ritual offering after the ceremony.’

  Humphrey is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong! In my view the country does care if the money is misspent, and I’m there as the country’s representative, to see that it isn’t.

  ‘With respect,[17] Minister,’ began Humphrey, one of his favourite insults in his varied repertoire, ‘people merely care that the money is not seen to be misspent.’

  I rejected that argument. I reminded him of the uproar over the mental hospital scandals.

  Cynical as ever, he claimed that such an uproar proved his point. ‘Those abuses had been going on quite happily for decades,’ he said. ‘No one was remotely concerned to find out what was being done with their money — it was their sacrifice, in fact. What outraged them was being told about it.’

  I realised that this whole ingenious theory, whether true or false, was being used by Humphrey as a smokescreen. I decided to ask a straight question.

  ‘Are we or aren’t we agreed that there is no point in keeping a hospital running for the benefit of the staff?’

  Humph
rey did not give a straight answer.

  ‘Minister,’ he admonished, ‘that is not how I would have expressed the question.’

  Then he fell silent.

  I pointed out that that was how I had expressed it.

  ‘Indeed,’ he said.

  And waited.

  Clearly, he had no intention of answering any straight question unless it was expressed in terms which he found wholly acceptable.

  I gave in. ‘All right,’ I snapped, ‘how would you express it?’

  ‘At the end of the day,’ he began, ‘one of a hospital’s prime functions is patient care.’

  ‘One?’ I said. ‘One? What else?’

  He refused to admit that I had interrupted him, and continued speaking with utter calm as if I had not said a word. ‘But, until we have the money for the nursing and medical staff, that is a function that we are not able to pursue. Perhaps in eighteen months or so…’

  ‘Eighteen months?’ I was appalled.

  ‘Yes, perhaps by then we may be able to open a couple of wards,’ he said, acknowledging finally that I had spoken.

  I regard this as so much stuff and nonsense. I instructed him to open some wards at once — and more than a couple.

  He countered by offering to form an interdepartmental committee to examine the feasibility of monitoring a proposal for admitting patients at an earlier date.

  I asked him how long that would take to report.

  ‘Not long, Minister.’

  ‘How long?’

  I knew the answer before he gave it — ‘Eighteen months,’ we said in unison.

  ‘Terrific!’ I added sarcastically.

  ‘Thank you,’ he replied, charmingly unaware. It’s hopeless.

  So I made a new suggestion. ‘I suggest that we get rid of everyone currently employed at the hospital and use the money to open closed wards in other hospitals.’

  [As Sir Humphrey had predicted, Hacker was prepared to shut down the whole hospital — Ed.]

  ‘And when we can afford it,’ I added sarcastically, ‘we’ll open St Edward’s with medical staff! If you would be so kind.’

  Humphrey then argued that if we closed the hospital now we would delay the opening of it with patients for years. ‘You talk,’ he said accusingly, ‘as if the staff have nothing to do, simply because there are no patients there.’