The Complete Yes Minister

by Jonathan Lynn

  Sir Humphrey was now tired of the fencing.

  ‘Minister, may I have a word with you?’

  ‘Certainly,’ I said, ‘as soon as Richard and I have…’

  He interrupted. ‘I mean now.’

  Now it was my turn to embarrass him a little. ‘Okay. Go ahead.’ I knew he wouldn’t want to talk in front of one of his juniors.

  ‘Upstairs, Minister, in your office if you please.’

  ‘But I’m sure Richard doesn’t mind.’

  ‘Upstairs, Minister. I’m sure Dr Cartwright can spare you for a few moments.’

  Cartwright missed the heavy sarcasm completely. ‘Oh yes,’ he said with an obliging smile.

  Sir Humphrey opened the door. Having been made to feel like a naughty schoolboy, I marched out of Cartwright’s office.

  I wonder how he knew I was in that office. I know Bernard wouldn’t have told him, so somebody must have seen me and reported it. I might as well be in the Soviet Union. Somehow I’ve got to get my freedom — but that involves winning the psychological war against Humphrey. And somehow, he always manages to make me feel guilty and unsure of myself.

  If only I could find a chink in his armour. If I ever do, he’s had it!

  Anyway, that tense little sparring match in Cartwright’s office wasn’t the end of the matter. A few minutes later, back in my office after an icy silent journey up in the lift and along the endless corridors, the row came to a head.

  He told me that I cannot just go around talking to people in the Department, and expressed the sincere hope that such a thing would not occur again.

  I could scarcely believe my ears. I ordered him to explain himself.

  ‘Minister, how can I advise you properly if I don’t know who’s saying what to whom? I must know what’s going on. You simply cannot have completely private meetings. And what if you’re told things that aren’t true?’

  ‘If they’re not true you can put me right.’

  ‘But they may be true.’

  ‘In that case…’ I began triumphantly. He interrupted me, correcting himself hastily.

  ‘That is, not entirely false. But misleading. Open to misinterpretation.’

  I faced him with a straight question. ‘The fact is, you’re just trying to keep things from me, aren’t you, Humphrey?’

  He was indignant. ‘Absolutely not, Minister. Records must be kept. You won’t be here forever, nor will we. In years to come it may be vital to know what you were told. If Cartwright were moved tomorrow, how could we check on your information?’

  On the face of it, that was a specious argument. ‘Cartwright isn’t being moved tomorrow,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, isn’t he?’ came the insolent response.

  Bernard interrupted us. Alex Andrews of The Mail wanted to do an interview with me for tomorrow. I agreed of course. I told Bernard to stay with us and minute our conversation. Humphrey had given me his views on my private meeting with Cartwright. Now he was going to hear mine.

  I began by repeating what Cartwright had told me: namely, that in his opinion — and the opinion of everyone who knows anything about local government — the South-West Derbyshire County Council is the most efficient in the country.

  ‘Inefficient, I think he means, Minister.’

  ‘Efficient, Humphrey. Effective. Economical. They’re just not particularly interested in sending pieces of blue paper to Whitehall.’

  Humphrey then explained something that I hadn’t quite grasped yet. Apparently they have to return those sodding blue forms, it’s a statutory requirement.

  And we know why. We know who decreed that it should be so.

  Even so, statutory requirements can be overlooked occasionally. Discretion can be exercised. So I asked Humphrey what happens if they don’t send in their blue forms. South-West Derbyshire carries on, rather well apparently.

  ‘But,’ said Humphrey, not seeing at all what I was getting at, ‘if they don’t send us the information and plans and requests for permission, well, what are we here for?’

  An excellent question, as I told him immediately. I asked it at once. ‘What are we here for?’

  ‘To collate the information, inspect the plans, and grant or withhold permission.’

  ‘And if we didn’t?’ I asked.

  He gazed at me studiously. I might have been talking Ancient Chinese, for all the sense I was making to him.

  ‘I’m sorry, Minister, I don’t understand.’

  I persevered. ‘If we didn’t. If we weren’t here and we didn’t do it — then what?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Minister, you’ve lost me.’

  Yet again, Humphrey demonstrates that his trouble is that he is concerned with means and not ends.

  [Many civil servants of the time deflected criticisms about ends and means by stating flippantly that the only ends in administration are loose ends. If administration is viewed in a vacuum this is, of course, true. Administration can have no end in itself, and is eternal. For ever and ever, amen — Ed.]

  [Hacker’s diary continues — Ed.]

  The upshot of the whole argument was that I refused to discipline the most efficient local authority in Britain, on the grounds that I would look like an idiot if I did.

  Sir Humphrey told me that was my job. I think he meant to discipline South-West Derbyshire, rather than to look like an idiot, but I’m not certain. He said that I had no alternative to consider, no discretion to exercise, and that the Treasury and the Cabinet Office insist.

  [By Cabinet Office Sir Humphrey clearly meant the Cabinet Secretary rather than the PM. But he could never have said so — the fiction had to be preserved that Britain was governed by Ministers who told civil servants what to do, not vice versa — Ed.]

  I still refused to co-operate.

  ‘Minister. You don’t seem to understand. It’s not up to you or me. It’s the law.’

  And there we left it. I felt a bit like a dog refusing to go for a walk — sitting down and digging in my paws while being dragged along the pavement on my bottom.

  But there must be some way out. The more I think of it, the less willing I am to discipline that council until there is really no alternative.

  And the more I think of it, the more I conclude that Bernard must have told Humphrey that I’d gone to talk to Cartwright.

  November 18th

  I had no free time to talk to Bernard on his own yesterday.

  But first thing this morning, while I was doing my letters, I had a serious word with Bernard. I asked him how Humphrey had found out yesterday that I was with Cartwright.

  ‘God moves in a mysterious way,’ he said earnestly.

  ‘Let me make one thing quite clear,’ I said, ‘Sir Humphrey is not God. Okay?’

  Bernard nodded. ‘Will you tell him, or shall I?’ he replied.

  Very droll. But again I asked him how Humphrey knew where to find me.

  I am fortunate that my dictaphone had been left running. I noticed it some minutes later. As a result I am able to record his reply for posterity in this diary.

  ‘Confidentially, Minister, everything you tell me is in complete confidence. So, equally, and I’m sure you appreciate this, and by appreciate I don’t actually mean appreciate, I mean understand, that everything that Sir Humphrey tells me is in complete confidence. As indeed everything I tell you is in complete confidence. And for that matter, everything I tell Sir Humphrey is in complete confidence.’

  ‘So?’ I said.

  ‘So, in complete confidence, I am confident you will understand that for me to keep Sir Humphrey’s confidence and your confidence means that my conversations must be completely confidential. As confidential as conversations between you and me are confidential, and I’ll just get Alex Andrews as he’s been waiting to see you, Minister.’

  There it is. Word for word. What was I supposed to make of that? Nothing, of course.

  My meeting with Alex Andrews of The Mail was today. I’d been very keen to fit him in at the earliest oppo
rtunity. I’d been hoping for a Profile, or something of that sort, but no such luck. Still, I’ve done him a good turn today, it’s no skin off my nose, and perhaps he’ll do the same for me one day.

  He asked for my help in a fascinating story that he had just come across. ‘Did you know that your government is about to give away forty million pounds’ worth of buildings, harbour installations, a landing-strip, to a private developer? For nothing?’

  I thought he was having me on. ‘Forty million pounds?’

  ‘Scout’s Honour.’

  ‘Why ask me?’ I said. Suddenly I had a dreadful moment of panic. ‘I didn’t do it, did I?’

  [You may think that Hacker should have known if he had done it. But a great many things are done in a Minister’s name, of which he may have little or no awareness — Ed.]

  Alex smiled, and told me to relax. Thank God!

  Then he told me the story. It goes back a long way. Almost thirty years ago the Ministry of Defence took a lease on a Scottish island. They put up barracks, married quarters, an HQ block, and the harbour and airstrip. Now the lease has expired and they all become the property of the original landowner. And he is turning it into an instant holiday camp. Chalets, yachting marina, staff quarters — it’s all there. He is going to make a fortune.

  I listened, open-mouthed. ‘But he can’t do that!’ I began. ‘The law says that…’

  Andrews interrupted me. ‘You’re talking about English law. This contract was under Scottish law and some idiot didn’t realise the difference.’

  I was relieved that at least I am in the clear. Even The Mail can’t blame me for a cock-up in the early fifties. Though I’m sure they would if they could. And I couldn’t at first see what he wanted from me. He already had the story. Thirty years late, as quick with the news as ever — still, not bad for Fleet Street!

  They are running the story tomorrow. But apparently they don’t want to leave it at that. The Editor wants Alex to follow up with an investigative feature. He wants him to go through the files, and find out exactly how it happened.

  I couldn’t see the point, not now.

  ‘Well,’ he explained, ‘there may be lessons for today. And we might find who was responsible.’

  I asked why it would matter? It would, in any case, have been handled by quite a junior official.

  He nodded. ‘Okay, but that was thirty years ago. He could be in a very senior position now, even a Permanent Secretary, running a great department, responsible for spending billions of pounds of public money.’

  A very unlikely eventuality, in my opinion. These hacks will do anything to try and find a story where there isn’t one.

  He agreed it was pretty unlikely. But he asked to see the papers.

  Naturally I had to be a bit cautious about that. I can’t just hand files over, as he well knows. But I advised him that, as it was a thirty-year lease that was in question, he would be able to get the papers from the Public Record Office under the Thirty-Year Rule.

  He was unimpressed. ‘I thought you’d say that. I’ve asked for them already. But I want a guarantee that I will get them. All of them.’

  I hate being asked to guarantee anything. I don’t really think it’s fair. And anyway, was I in a position to? ‘Well,’ I said, carefully feeling my way, ‘Defence papers are sometimes…’

  He interrupted me. ‘Don’t come that one. It’s not top security. Look, you made a manifesto commitment about telling voters the facts. This is a test case. Will you guarantee that no papers are removed before the files are opened?’

  I could see no reason not to give him that guarantee. ‘Fine,’ I said, throwing caution to the winds. ‘No problem.’

  ‘Is that a promise?’ Journalists are suspicious bastards.

  ‘Sure,’ I said with a big reassuring smile.

  ‘A real promise? Not a manifesto promise?’

  Some of these young Fleet Street fellows can be really rather insulting.

  ‘Your trouble, Alex,’ I said, ‘is that you can’t take yes for an answer.’

  ‘Because otherwise,’ he continued as if I hadn’t even spoken, ‘we do the feature on Ministers ratting on manifestos.’

  Clearly I shall now have to stand by that promise. It’s fortunate that I have every intention of doing so.

  [The following day The Mail ran the story, exactly as predicted in Hacker’s diary (see below). That night Sir Humphrey’s diary contains the following entry — Ed.]

  Horrible shock.

  A story in today’s Mail about the Glenloch Island base.

  I read it on the 8.32 from Haslemere to Waterloo. Was seized instantly by what Dr Hindley calls a panic attack. A sort of tight feeling in the chest, I felt I couldn’t breathe, and I had to get up and walk up and down the compartment which struck one or two of the regulars on the 8.32 as a bit strange. Or perhaps I just think that because of the panic attack.

  Fortunately Valium did the trick as the day wore on, and I’ll take a few Mogadon[60] tonight.

  I tell myself that no one will ever connect that incident with me, and that it’s all ancient history anyway, and that that’s the last that anyone will want to know about it.

  I tell myself that — but somehow it’s not helping!

  Why has this come up now, so many years later, when I thought it was all forgotten?

  If only there was someone I could talk to about this.

  Oh my God…

  [Hacker’s diary continues — Ed.]

  November 21st

  They ran that story in The Mail today. Quite amusing.

  November 22nd

  Today was the happiest day of my ministerial life.

  All my prayers were answered.

  As Humphrey and I were finishing up our weekly departmental meeting I asked him if he’d seen the story in yesterday’s Mail.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said.

  I reminded him. I knew he must have seen it, someone must have drawn his attention to it. ‘You know,’ I added, ‘about that frightful cock-up thirty years ago over the terms of that Scottish island base.’

  Now, as I think back, he seemed to flinch a little as I said ‘that frightful cock-up’. Though I must say, I wasn’t really aware of it at the time.

  Anyway, he did remember the article, and he said that he believed that he had glanced at it, yes.

  ‘I must say,’ I said, chuckling, ‘I think it’s pretty funny — forty million quid down the tube. Someone really boobed there, didn’t they?’

  He nodded and smiled, a little wanly.

  ‘Still, it couldn’t happen in your Department could it?’

  ‘No,’ he said with absolute firmness. ‘Oh no. Absolutely.’

  I said that I’d been wondering who it was.

  ‘That, Minister, is something that we shall never know.’

  I pointed out that it must be on the files. Everything is always put in writing, as he so constantly reminds me.

  Humphrey agreed that it would be on the record somewhere, but it would take ages to find out and it’s obviously not worth anyone’s time.

  ‘Actually, you’re wrong there,’ I said. ‘The Mail are doing a big feature on it when the papers are released under the Thirty-Year Rule. I’ve promised them a free run of all the files.’

  Humphrey literally rocked backwards on his feet.

  ‘Minister!’

  I was slightly shaken by his anger. Or was it anger? I couldn’t tell.

  ‘It’s all right, isn’t it?’ I asked anxiously.

  Yes, it was anger! ‘All right? All right? No, it is certainly not all right.’

  I asked why not. He told me it was ‘impossible and unthinkable’. That didn’t sound like much of an explanation to me, and I said as much.

  ‘It… it’s… top security, Minister.’

  ‘A few barracks?’

  ‘But there were secret naval installations, anti-submarine systems, low-level-radar towers.’

  I pointed out that he couldn’t possibl
y know what had been there. He agreed at once, but added — rather lamely, I thought — that that’s the sort of thing those island bases always had.

  ‘They’ll have been dismantled,’ I said. His objection was clearly quite irrelevant.

  ‘But the papers will have references.’

  ‘It’s ancient history.’

  ‘Anyway,’ he said with evident relief, ‘we’d have to consult. Get clearances.’

  A few months ago I would have accepted that sort of remark from Humphrey. Now, I’m just a little older and wiser.

  ‘Who from?’ I asked.

  He looked wildly about, and spoke completely incoherently. ‘Security implications… MI5, MI6… the national interest… foreign powers… consult our allies… top brass… CIA… NATO, SEATO, Moscow!’

  ‘Humphrey,’ I asked carefully, ‘are you all right?’

  ‘Not Moscow, no, I don’t mean Moscow,’ he corrected himself hastily. I got the impression that he was just saying the first words that came into his head, and that the word Moscow had been uttered simply because it rhymed.

  He could see I wasn’t convinced, and added: ‘There could be information that would damage people still alive.’

  This seemed to matter to him greatly. But it cut no ice with me.

  ‘Whoever drafted that contract,’ I insisted, ‘ought to be damaged if he’s still alive.’

  ‘Oh, quite, absolutely, no question of protecting officials. Of course not. But responsible Ministers…’

  I interrupted him. I wasn’t the least concerned about some Minister who’d been responsible thirty years ago. It couldn’t matter less. Anyway, the other lot were in office then, so it’s fairly amusing.

  I simply couldn’t figure out the reason for his intense opposition to releasing these papers. I asked him why he was so concerned.

  He sat back in his chair and crossed his legs casually. ‘I’m not. Not at all. I mean, not personally. But it’s the principle, the precedent… the… the…’ he was lost for words ‘… the policy.’

  Trapped. I’d got him. ‘Policy’s up to me, Humphrey, remember?’ I said with a smile. And before he could continue the argument I added, ‘And I’ve promised, so it’s done now, okay?’