He just sat there, sagging slightly, looking at me. Evidently he was trying to decide whether or not to say something. Finally he gave up. He stood wearily and, without looking at me, walked silently out of the room and shut the door behind him.
He seemed tired, listless, and quite without his usual energy.
Bernard had been present throughout the meeting. He waited, patiently, as usual, to be either used or dismissed.
I gazed at the door which Humphrey had closed quietly behind him.
‘What’s the matter with Humphrey?’ I asked. There was no reply from Bernard. ‘Have I done something wrong?’ Again there was no reply. ‘There aren’t any security aspects, are there?’ This time I waited a while, but answer came there none. ‘So what is the problem?’ I turned to look at Bernard, who appeared to be staring vacantly into space like a contented heifer chewing the cud.
‘Am I talking to myself?’
He turned his gaze in my direction.
‘No Minister, I am listening.’
‘Then why don’t you reply?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought your questions were purely rhetorical. I can see no reason for Sir Humphrey to be so anxious.’
And then the penny dropped.
Suddenly I saw it.
I didn’t know how I could have been so blind. So dumb. And yet, the answer — obvious though it was — seemed scarcely credible.
‘Unless…’ I began, and then looked at Bernard. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’
He looked puzzled. ‘I don’t think so, Minister,’ he replied cautiously, and then added with a flash of cheerful honesty, ‘I’m not thinking anything really.’
‘I think,’ I said, uncertain how to broach it, ‘that I smell a rat.’
‘Oh. Shall I fetch an Environmental Health Officer?’
I didn’t like actually to put my suspicions into words. Not yet. I thought I’d go carefully. So I asked Bernard how long Sir Humphrey had been here at the Department of Administrative Affairs.
‘Oh, all his career, hasn’t he? Ever since it was founded.’
‘When was that?’ I asked.
‘1964. Same time that they started the Department of Economic Affairs…’ he stopped dead, and stared at me, wide-eyed. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Now I think I’m thinking what you’re thinking.’
‘Well?’ I asked.
He wanted to be cautious too. ‘You’re thinking: where was he before 1964?’
I nodded slowly.
‘It’ll be in Who’s Who.’ He stood, then hurried to the glass-fronted mahogany bookcase near the marble fireplace. He fished out Who’s Who, talking as he leafed through the pages. ‘He must have been in some other Department, and been trawled when the DAA started. [‘Trawled’, i.e. caught in a net, is the standard Civil Service word for ‘head-hunting’ through other departments — Ed.]
He ran his forefinger down a page, and said in one sentence: ‘Ah here we are oh my God!’
I waited.
Bernard turned to me. ‘From 1950 to 1956 he was an Assistant Principal at the Scottish Office. Not only that. He was on secondment from the War Office. His job was Regional Contracts Officer. Thirty years ago.’
There could be no doubt who the culprit was. The official who had chucked away that forty million pounds of the taxpayers’ money was the current Permanent Under-Secretary of the Department of Administrative Affairs, Sir Humphrey Appleby, KCB, MVO, MA (Oxon).
Bernard said, ‘This is awful,’ but his eyes were twinkling.
‘Terrible,’ I agreed, and found myself equally unable to prevent a smile creeping across my face. ‘And the papers are all due for release in a few weeks’ time.’
I suddenly felt awfully happy. And I told Bernard to get Humphrey back into my office at once.
He picked up the phone and dialled. ‘Hello Graham, it’s Bernard. The Minister wondered if Sir Humphrey could spare some time for a meeting some time in the next couple of days.’
‘At once,’ I said.
‘In fact, some time during the course of today is really what the Minister has in mind.’
‘At once,’ I repeated.
‘Or to be precise, any time within the next sixty seconds really.’
He listened for a moment, then replaced the receiver. ‘He’s coming round now.’
‘Why?’ I was feeling malicious. ‘Did he faint?’
We looked at each other in silence. And we both tried very hard not to laugh.
Bernard’s mouth was twitching from the strain.
‘This is very serious, Bernard.’
‘Yes Minister,’ he squeaked.
I was, by now, crying from the effort not to laugh. I covered my eyes and my face with my handkerchief.
‘No laughing matter,’ I said, in a strangled muffled gasp, and the tears rolled down my cheeks.
‘Absolutely not,’ he wheezed.
We recovered as best we could, shaking silently, but didn’t dare look at each other for a little while. I sat back in my chair and gazed reflectively at the ceiling.
‘The point is,’ I said, ‘how do I best handle this?’
‘Well, in my opinion…’
‘The question was purely rhetorical, Bernard.’
Then the door opened, and a desperately worried little face peeped around it.
It was Sir Humphrey Appleby. But not the Humphrey Appleby I knew. This was not a God bestriding the Department of Administrative Affairs like a colossus, this was a guilty ferret with shifty beady eyes.
‘You wanted a word, Minister?’ he said, still half-hidden behind the door.
I greeted him jovially. I invited him in, asked him to sit down and — rather regretfully — dismissed Bernard. Bernard made a hurried and undignified exit, his handkerchief to his mouth, and curious choking noises emanating from it.
Humphrey sat in front of me. I told him that I’d been thinking about this Scottish island scandal, which I found very worrying.
He made some dismissive remark, but I persisted. ‘You see, it probably hasn’t occurred to you but that official could still be in the Civil Service.’
‘Most unlikely,’ said Sir Humphrey, presumably in the hope that this would discourage me from trying to find out.
‘Why? He could have been in his mid-twenties then. He’d be in his mid-fifties now,’ I was enjoying myself thoroughly. ‘Might even be a Permanent Secretary.’
He didn’t know how to reply to that. ‘I, er, I hardly think so,’ he said, damning himself further.
I agreed, and said that I sincerely hoped that anyone who made a howler like that could never go on to be a Permanent Secretary. He nodded, but the expression on his face looked as though his teeth were being pulled out without an anaesthetic.
‘But it was so long ago,’ he said. ‘We can’t find out that sort of thing now.’
And then I went for the jugular. This was the moment I’d been waiting for. Little did I dream, after he had humiliated me in front of Richard Cartwright, that I would be able to return the compliment so soon.
And with the special pleasure of using his own arguments on him.
‘Of course we can find out,’ I said. ‘You were telling me that everything is minuted and full records are always kept in the Civil Service. And you were quite right. Well, legal documents concerning a current lease could not possibly have been thrown away.’
He stood. Panic was overcoming him. He made an emotional plea, the first time I can remember him doing such a thing. ‘Minister, aren’t we making too much of this? Possibly blighting a brilliant career because of a tiny slip thirty years ago. It’s not such a lot of money wasted.’
I was incredulous. ‘Forty million?’
‘Well,’ he argued passionately, ‘that’s not such a lot compared with Blue Streak, the TSR2, Trident, Concorde, high-rise council flats, British Steel, British Rail, British Leyland, Upper Clyde Ship Builders, the atomic power station programme, comprehensive schools, or the University of Es
sex.’
[In those terms, his argument was of course perfectly reasonable — Ed.]
‘I take your point,’ I replied calmly. ‘But it’s still over a hundred times more than the official in question can have earned in his entire career.’
And then I had this wonderful idea. And I added: ‘I want you to look into it and find out who it was, okay?’
Checkmate. He realised that there was no way out. Heavily, he sat down again, paused, and then told me that there was something that he thought I ought to know.
Surreptitiously I reached into my desk drawer and turned on my little pocket dictaphone. I wanted his confession to be minuted. Why not? All conversations have to be minuted. Records must be kept, mustn’t they?
This is what he said. ‘The identity of this official whose alleged responsibility for this hypothetical oversight has been the subject of recent speculation is not shrouded in quite such impenetrable obscurity as certain previous disclosures may have led you to assume, and, in fact, not to put too fine a point on it, the individual in question was, it may surprise you to learn, the one to whom your present interlocutor is in the habit of identifying by means of the perpendicular pronoun.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.
There was an anguished pause.
‘It was I,’ he said.
I assumed a facial expression of deep shock. ‘Humphrey! No!’
He looked as though he was about to burst into tears. His fists clenched, knuckles whitened. Then he burst out. ‘I was under pressure! We were overworked! There was a panic! Parliamentary questions tabled.’ He looked up at me for support. ‘Obviously I’m not a trained lawyer, or I wouldn’t have been in charge of the legal unit.’
[True enough. This was the era of the generalist, in which it would have seemed sensible and proper to put a classicist in charge of a legal unit or a historian in charge of statistics — Ed.] ‘Anyway — it just happened. But it was thirty years ago, Minister. Everyone makes mistakes.’
I was not cruel enough to make him suffer any longer. ‘Very well Humphrey,’ I said in my most papal voice. ‘I forgive you.’
He was almost embarrassingly grateful and thanked me profusely.
I expressed surprise that he hadn’t told me. ‘We don’t have any secrets from each other, do we?’ I asked him.
He didn’t seem to realise that I had my tongue in my cheek. Nor did he give me an honest answer.
‘That’s for you to say, Minister.’
‘Not entirely,’ I replied.
Nonetheless, he was clearly in a state of humble gratitude and genuinely ready to creep. And now that he was so thoroughly softened up, I decided that this was the moment to offer my quid pro quo.
‘So what do I do about this?’ I asked. ‘I’ve promised to let The Mail see all the papers. If I go back on my word I’ll be roasted.’ I looked him straight in the eye. ‘On the other hand, I might be able to do something if I didn’t have this other problem on my plate.’
He knew only too well what I was saying. He’s done this to me often enough.
So, immediately alert, he asked me what the other problem was.
‘Being roasted by the press for disciplining the most efficient council in Britain.’
He saw the point at once, and adjusted his position with commendable speed.
After only a momentary hesitation he told me that he’d been thinking about South-West Derbyshire, that obviously we can’t change the law as such, but that it might be possible to show a little leniency.
We agreed that a private word to the Chief Executive would suffice for the moment, giving them a chance to mend their ways.
I agreed that this would be the right way to handle the council. But it still left one outstanding problem: how would I explain the missing papers to The Mail?
We left it there. Humphrey assured me that he would give the question his most urgent and immediate attention.
I’m sure he will. I look forward to seeing what he comes up with tomorrow.
November 23rd
When I arrived at the office this morning Bernard informed me that Sir Humphrey wished to see me right away.
He hurried in clutching a thin file, and looking distinctly more cheerful.
I asked him what the answer was to be.
‘Minister,’ he said, ‘I’ve been on to the Lord Chancellor’s Office, and this is what we normally say in circumstances like this.’
He handed me the file. Inside was a sheet of paper which read as follows:
‘This file contains the complete set of available papers except for:
(a) a small number of secret documents
(b) a few documents which are part of still active files
(c) some correspondence lost in the floods of 1967
(d) some records which went astray in the move to London
(e) other records which went astray when the War Office was incorporated into the Ministry of Defence
(f) the normal withdrawal of papers whose publication could give grounds for an action for libel or breach of confidence or cause embarrassment to friendly governments.’
[1967 was, in one sense, a very bad winter. From the Civil Service point of view it was a very good one. All sorts of embarrassing records were lost — Ed.]
I read this excellent list. Then I looked in the file. There were no papers there at all! Completely empty.
‘Is this how many are left? None?’
‘Yes Minister.’
Notes
1
‘Hacker’s constituency party Chairman.
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2
Frank Weisel.
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3
K means Knighthood. KCB is Knight Commander of the Bath. G means Grand Cross. GCB is Knight Grand Cross of the Bath.
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4
FROLINAT was the National Liberation Front of Chad, a French acronym. FRETELIN was the Trust For the Liberation of Timor, a small Portuguese colony seized by Indonesia: a Portuguese acronym. ZIPRA was the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army, ZANLA the Zimbabwe African Liberation Army, ZAPU the Zimbabwe African People’s Union, ZANU the Zimbabwe African National Union, CARECOM is the acronym for the Caribbean Common Market and COREPER the Committee of Permanent Representatives to the European Community — a French acronym, pronounced co-ray-pair. ECOSOC was the Economic and Social Council of the UN, UNIDO the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation, IBRD the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and OECD was the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. GRAPO could not conceivably have been relevant to the conversation, as it is the Spanish acronym for the First of October Anti-Fascist Revolutionary Group.
It is not impossible that Sir Humphrey may have been trying to confuse his Minister.
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5
Hacker might perhaps have been thinking of the Polish shipbuilding deal during the Callaghan government, by which the UK lent money interest free to the Poles, so that they could buy oil tankers from us with our money, tankers which were then going to compete against our own shipping industry. These tankers were to be built on Tyneside, a Labour-held marginal with high unemployment. It could have been said that the Labour government was using public money to buy Labour votes, but no one did — perhaps because, like germ warfare, no one wants to risk using an uncontrollable weapon that may in due course be used against oneself.
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6
The Bureaucratic Watchdog was an innovation of Hacker’s, to which members of the public were invited to report any instances of excessive government bureaucracy which they encountered personally. It was disbanded after four months.
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7
In conversation with the Editors.
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8
In conversation with the Editors.
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9
Dr Donald Hughes was the Prime Mi
nister’s Senior Policy Adviser, brought into government from outside. Tough, intelligent, hard-bitten and with no love for senior civil servants.
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10
Hacker was clearly right about this. On the same euphemistic principle, the Ministry of War was renamed the Ministry of Defence, and the Department responsible for unemployment was called the Department of Employment.
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11
The Council for the Protection of Rural England.
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12
In conversation with the Editors.
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13
In conversation with the Editors.
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14
The Crichel Down affair in 1954 was possibly the last example of a Minister accepting full responsibility for a scandal within his Department, about which he did not know and could not have known. Nevertheless, Sir Thomas Dugdale, then Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, accepted that as the Minister he was constitutionally responsible to Parliament for the wrong actions of his officials, even though their actions were not ordered by him and would not have been approved by him. He resigned, was kicked upstairs to the Lords and a promising career came to an end. No Minister since then has been — depending on your point of view — either so scrupulous or so foolish.
The Complete Yes Minister Page 52