The Complete Yes Minister (16 page)

While I was still reeling from this, he added, no doubt for further clarification, ‘As far as one can see, at this stage.’

I made one last attempt. ‘Does that mean yes or no?’ I asked, without much hope.

‘Yes and no,’ he replied helpfully.

‘Suppose,’ I said, ‘suppose you
weren’t
asked for a straight answer?’

‘Ah,’ he said happily, ‘then I should play for time, Minister.’

Humphrey’s never going to change. I certainly will never change him. Today I got nowhere fast. No, not even fast – I got nowhere, slowly and painfully! The conversation finished with Humphrey suggesting that I take the draft home and study it for the next couple of days, because I might then find that it does indeed say what I want it to say. An idiotic time-wasting suggestion, of course. He’s just trying to wear me down.

‘And if it doesn’t say what I want it to say?’ I asked testily.

Sir Humphrey smiled. ‘Then we shall be happy to redraft it for you, Minister,’ he said.

Back to square one.

I have thought about yesterday’s events very carefully. I do not propose to give this draft back to the Department for any more redrafting. I shall write it myself, and not return it until it is too late for them to change it.

I mentioned this to Bernard, and he thought it was a good idea. I told him in the strictest confidence, and I hope I can trust him. I’m sure I can.

[
Hacker reckoned without the pressures that the Civil Service can apply to its own people. Sir Humphrey enquired about the fourth draft report several times over the next two weeks, and observed that Bernard Woolley was giving evasive answers. Finally, Bernard was invited for a disciplinary drink at Sir Humphrey’s Club in Pall Mall. We have found a memo about the meeting among Sir Humphrey’s private papers – Ed
.]

B. W. came for a drink at the Club.

I questioned him about the Department’s Report to the Think-Tank.

He said, ‘You mean, the Minister’s report?’, a not-insignificant remark.

In answer to my questions as to why we had not yet had it returned to us, he suggested that I ask the Minister. A most unsatisfactory reply.

I explained that I had chosen to ask
him
. As he remained stubbornly silent, I observed that he did not seem to be replying.

‘Yes and no,’ he said. He knows full well that this is one of my favourite replies, and I felt obliged to tick him off for impertinence.

In answer to other questions, B.W. insisted that the Minister is doing his boxes conscientiously, but repeatedly refused to explain the delay over the draft report, merely advising me to enquire of the Minister as he (B.W.) was the Minister’s
Private
Secretary.

He appeared to be anxious about his situation, and clearly had been put under some obligation by the Minister to treat some piece of information in strict confidence. I therefore decided to increase his anxiety considerably, to the extent that he would be obliged to find a way of either satisfying both myself and his Minister, and therefore showing that he is worthy to be a flyer [
‘High Flyer’ means young man destined for the very top of the Service – Ed
.] or of taking one side or the other, thereby revealing an inability to walk a tightrope in a high wind.

I therefore reminded him that he was an employee of the DAA. And, admirable though it is to be loyal to his Minister, an average Minister’s tenure is a mere eleven months whereas Bernard’s career will, he hopes, last until the age of sixty.

B.W. handled the situation with skill. He opted for asking me a hypothetical question, always a good idea.

He asked me:
If
a purely hypothetical Minister were to be unhappy with a departmental draft of evidence to a committee, and
if
the hypothetical Minister were to be planning to replace it with his own hypothetical draft worked out with his own political advisers at his party HQ, and
if
this Minister was planning to bring in his own draft so close to the final date for evidence that there would be no time to redraft it, and
if
the hypothetical Private Secretary were to be aware of this hypothetical draft – in confidence – should the hypothetical Private Secretary pass on the information to the Perm. Sec. of the hypothetical Department?

A good question. Naturally, I answered B.W. by saying that no Private Secretary should pass on such information, if given in confidence.

B. W. shows more promise than I thought. [
Appleby Papers 23/RPY/13c
]

It is now two weeks since I decided to take over the Think-Tank report. My final redraft is going well. Frank and his chaps have been hard at work on it, and I’ve been burning the midnight oil as well. The situation seems to be infuriating Humphrey, which gives me some considerable pleasure.

Today he again asked me about my redraft of the redraft of the draft. ‘What about the evidence to the Central Policy Review Staff?’ he said.

‘You mean the Think-Tank?’ I said playing for time.

‘Yes Minister.’

‘Why do you want it?’ I asked.

‘So that we can redraft it.’

‘That won’t be necessary.’

‘I think it will, Minister.’

‘Humphrey,’ I said firmly, ‘drafting is not a Civil Service monopoly.’

‘It is a highly specialised skill,’ he replied, ‘which few people outside the Service can master.’

‘Nonsense,’ I said. ‘Drafts are easy. It’s a game anyone can play.’

‘Not without getting huffed,’ he answered. Actually, he’s quite witty, really.

I chuckled at his joke, and changed the subject. But he didn’t let me get away with it. ‘So can I have the draft back, please?’ he persisted.

‘Of course,’ I said, with a smile. He waited. In vain.

‘When, Minister?’ he asked, trying to smile back, but definitely through clenched teeth.

‘Later,’ I said airily.

‘But
when
?’ he snarled through his smile.

‘You always say we mustn’t rush things,’ I said irritatingly.

He then asked me for a straight answer! The nerve of it! However, as he had started to use my terminology, I answered him in his.

‘In due course, Humphrey.’ I was really enjoying myself. ‘In the fullness of time. At the appropriate juncture. When the moment is ripe. When the requisite procedures have been completed. Nothing precipitate, you understand.’

‘Minister,’ he said, losing all traces of good humour. ‘It is getting urgent.’

He was getting rattled. Great. My tactics were a triumph. ‘Urgent?’ I said blandly. ‘You
are
learning a lot of new words.’ I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so rude to anyone in my life. I was having a wonderful time. I must try it more often.

‘I hope you will forgive me for saying this,’ began Sir Humphrey in his iciest manner, ‘but I am beginning to suspect that you are concealing something from me.’

I feigned shock, surprise, puzzlement, ignorance – a whole mass of false emotions. ‘Humphrey!’ I said in my most deeply shocked voice, ‘surely we don’t have any secrets from each other?’

‘I’m sorry, Minister, but sometimes one is forced to consider the possibility that affairs are being conducted in a way which, all things being considered, and making all possible allowances, is, not to put too fine a point on it, perhaps not entirely straightforward.’ Sir Humphrey was insulting me in the plainest language he could manage in a crisis. Not entirely straightforward, indeed! Clearly, just as it’s against the rules of the House to call anyone a liar, it’s against the Whitehall code of conduct too.

So I decided to come clean at last. I told him that I have redrafted the redraft myself, that I’m perfectly happy with it, and that I don’t want him to redraft it again.

‘But . . .’ began Sir Humphrey.

‘No buts,’ I snapped. ‘All I get from the Civil Service is delaying tactics.’

‘I wouldn’t call Civil Service delays “tactics”, Minister,’ he replied smoothly. ‘That would be to mistake lethargy for strategy.’

I asked him if we hadn’t already set up a committee to investigate delays in the Civil Service. He concurred.

‘What happened to it?’ I asked.

‘Oh,’ he said, brushing the matter aside, ‘it hasn’t met yet.’

‘Why not?’ I wanted to know.

‘There . . . seems to have been a delay,’ he admitted.

It is vital that I make Humphrey realise that there is a real desire for radical reform in the air. I reminded him that the All-Party Select Committee on Administrative Affairs, which I founded, has been a great success.

This was probably an error, because he immediately asked me what it has achieved. I was forced to admit that it hasn’t actually achieved anything
yet
, but I pointed out that the party is very pleased by it.

‘Really?’ he asked. ‘Why?’

‘Ten column inches in the
Daily Mail
last Monday, for a start,’ I replied proudly.

‘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.’

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
.]

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.

Incredible!

It is true, of course. I have learned that he who drafts the document wins the day.

[
This is the reason why it was common Civil Service practice at this time to write the minutes of a meeting
BEFORE
the meeting took place. This achieves two things. First, it helps the chairman or secretary to ensure that the discussion follows the lines agreed beforehand and that the right points are made by somebody. And second, as busy men generally cannot quite remember what was agreed at meetings, it is extremely useful and convenient to lay it down in advance. Only if the conclusions reached at a meeting are radically different or diametrically opposed to what has been previously written in the minutes will the officials have to rewrite them. Thus it is that pre-written minutes can dictate the results of many meetings, regardless of what may be said or agreed by those actually present – Ed
.]