The Complete Yes Minister

And I doubt if I can ever really catch up on it because tomorrow I go in front of a Select Committee and I’ve got to try to read the redrafted paper on Establishment levels beforehand. Not only read it, but understand it. And not only understand it, but remember it. And it’s been written by an Under-Secretary – therefore it’s not in English, but in Under-Secretaryese.

Still, at least the press did report my speech, so that’s all right.

Sir Humphrey popped in to welcome me home, and to brief me about the Select Committee.

‘You do realise the importance of this hearing, don’t you Minister?’

‘Of course I do, Humphrey. The press will be there,’ I explained.

[Like many politicians, Hacker did not seem to believe in his own existence unless he was reading about himself in the newspapers – Ed.]

‘It’s not just a question of the press,’ he said. ‘This is a scrutiny of the Department’s future operation. If we were to emerge from the hearing as extravagant or incompetent . . .’

I interrupted him with a penetrating question. ‘Are we extravagant or incompetent?’

‘Of course not,’ he replied with considerable indignation. ‘But there are hostile MPs on the Committee. Especially the member for Derbyshire East.’

I hadn’t realised that Betty Oldham was on the Committee.

Humphrey handed me a thick folder full of papers, with red and yellow and blue tags. ‘I urge you to master this brief, Minister,’ he said, and told me to ask if I found any problems.

I was fed up. I’m tired and jet-lagged today. I told him that I didn’t want another brief on the Select Committee, I only just mastered one on the plane.

‘What was in it?’ he asked.

That was a bit embarrassing. I couldn’t quite remember. I explained that it’s rather hard to concentrate on the plane, as they keep trying to serve you drinks and show you movies and wake you up.

‘I’m sure it’s frightfully difficult to concentrate if you keep being woken up, Minister,’ he said sympathetically. He added that this was the first and only brief containing possible questions from the Committee, all with the appropriate answers carefully presented to give the Department’s position.

‘Are they all absolutely accurate?’ I wanted to know.

‘It is carefully presented to give the Department’s position,’ he replied carefully.

‘Humphrey,’ I explained equally carefully. ‘These Select Committees are very important. I can’t be seen to mislead them.’

‘You will not be seen to mislead them.’

I wasn’t satisfied. I began to suspect that the brief was not strictly honest. I pressed him further.

‘Is it the truth?’

‘The truth and nothing but the truth,’ he assured me.

‘And the whole truth?’

‘Of course not, Minister,’ he replied with some impatience.

I was confused. ‘So we tell them we’re keeping some things secret, do we?’

He shook his head and smiled. ‘Indeed not.’

‘Why not?’ I asked.

Sir Humphrey rose from his chair and announced magisterially: ‘He that would keep a secret must keep it secret that he hath a secret to keep.’ Then he left the room.

I was interested in the quotation, which struck me as rather profound. ‘Who said that?’ I asked Bernard.

Bernard looked puzzled. He stared at me, and then stared at the doorway through which Sir Humphrey had just walked.

‘It was Sir Humphrey,’ he said.

[It is significant that Hacker was not at all shocked at the suggestion that he should conceal information from the Select Committee, or indeed tell lies to it. Such lies would be regarded in government circles as white lies. There are a number of issues about which a Minister automatically tells lies, and he would be regarded as foolish or incompetent if he told the truth. For instance, he would always deny an impending devaluation, or a run on the pound. And he would always give the impression that the UK had adequate and credible defences – Ed.]

I sat at my desk feeling utterly washed out after a night with British Airways and a day with the Civil Service, and gazed at the enormous brief that I had to master in one day.

‘Why,’ I wondered aloud, ‘are Ministers never allowed to go anywhere without their briefs?’

‘It’s in case they get caught with their trousers down,’ Bernard replied rather wittily. At least, I think it was wit, but it might just have been a lucky chance.

He had kept my diary free for the whole day, so we were not interrupted. It emerged, as we went through it, that the submission that I’d read on the plane was a rehash of the report the Department produced last year. And the year before. And the year before that. Ever since 1867 probably. I pointed out to Bernard that the first sentence was enough to cure anybody of any desire to read the thing: ‘The function of the DAA is to support and service the administrative work of all government departments.’

‘Oh no,’ he said, ‘that bit’s fascinating.’