The Complete Yes Minister

I felt that I’d spent enough time on this pointless meeting. I brought it to a close.

‘Well, there it is,’ I said. ‘You can still put in your formal application, but that will be my decision, I’m sure.’

Bernard opened the door for Sir Desmond, who stood up very reluctantly.

‘Suppose we design a different rice pudding?’ he said.

I think he must be suffering from premature senility.

‘Rice pudding?’ I asked.

Humphrey stepped in, tactful as ever. ‘It’s er . . . it’s bankers’ jargon for high-rise buildings, Minister.’

‘Is it?’ asked Sir Desmond.

Poor old fellow.

After he’d gone I thanked Humphrey for all his help. He seemed genuinely pleased.

I made a point of thanking him especially because I know that he and Desmond Glazebrook were old chums.

‘We’ve known each other a long time, Minister,’ he replied. ‘But even a lifelong friendship is as naught compared with a civil servant’s duty to support his Minister.’

Quite right too.

Then I had to rush off to my public appearance at the City Farm.

Before I left, Humphrey insisted that I sign some document. He said it was urgent. An administrative order formalising government powers for temporary utilisation of something-or-other. He gave me some gobbledegook explanation of why I had to sign it rather than its being put before the House. Just some piece of red tape.

But I wish he wouldn’t always try to explain these things to me when he can see I’m late for some other appointment.

Not that it matters much.

SIR BERNARD WOOLLEY RECALLS:¹

Hacker was being thoroughly bamboozled by Sir Humphrey and was completely unaware of it.

The Administrative Order in question was to formalise government powers for the temporary utilisation of unused local authority land until development commences, when of course it reverts to the authority.

In answer to Hacker’s question as to why it was not being laid before the House, Sir Humphrey gave the correct answer. He explained that if it were a statutory instrument it would indeed have to be laid on the table of the House, for forty days, assuming it were a negative order, since an affirmative order would, of course, necessitate a vote, but in fact it was not a statutory instrument nor indeed an Order in Council but simply an Administrative order made under Section 7, subsection 3 of the Environmental Administration Act, which was of course an enabling section empowering the Minister to make such regulations affecting small-scale land usage as might from time to time appear desirable within the general framework of the Act.

After he had explained all this, to Hacker’s evident incomprehension, he added humorously, ‘as I’m sure you recollect only too clearly, Minister.’ Appleby really was rather a cad!

I must say, though, that even I didn’t grasp the full significance of this move that afternoon. I didn’t even fully comprehend, in those days, why Humphrey had persuaded Hacker to sign the document on the pretext that it was urgent.

‘It was not urgent,’ he explained to me later, ‘but it was important. Any document that removes the power of decision from Ministers and gives it to us is important.’

I asked why. He rightly ticked me off for obtuseness. Giving powers of decision to the Service helps to take government out of politics. That was, in his view, Britain’s only hope of survival.

The urgency was true in one sense, of course, in that whenever you want a Minister to sign something without too many questions it is always better to wait until he is in a hurry. That is when their concentration is weakest. Ministers are always vulnerable when they are in a hurry.

That is why we always kept them on the go, of course.

[Hacker’s diary for that day continues – Ed.]

It’s always hard to find something to make a speech about. We have to make a great many speeches, of course – local authority elections, by-elections, GLC elections, opening village fetes or the new old people’s home, every weekend in my constituency there’s something.

We must try to have something to say. Yet it can’t be particularly new or else we’d have to say it in the House first, and it can’t be particularly interesting or we’d already have said it on TV or radio. I’m always hoping that the Department will cook up something for me to talk about, something that we in the government would have to be talking about anyway.

Equally, you have to be careful that, in their eagerness to find something, they don’t cook up anything too damn silly. After all, I’ve got to actually get up and say it.

Most civil servants can’t write speeches. But they can dig up a plum for me (occasionally) and, without fail, they should warn me of any possible banana skins.

Today I planned to make a sort of generalised speech on the environment, which I’m doing a lot of recently and which seems to go down well with everyone.

Hacker was persuaded to pose for the above photograph against his better jugement, because he was unwilling to appear ‘a bad sport’ in public. He subsequently had the photograph suppressed but it was released under the Thirty-year Rule (DAA Archives)