The Complete Yes Minister

I asked him how anyone could be fascinated by it.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘if you look back to the first report in 1868, when Gladstone set up this Department’s predecessor, you find that the first sentence is, ‘The Department is responsible for the economic and efficient administration of government.’

‘Ah,’ I said, ‘is that what it was for?’

‘Yes,’ said Bernard, ‘but it proved a tough remit. They were responsible for every bit of waste and inefficiency. I suppose Gladstone meant them to be. So when it got too hot they did the usual.’

‘What is “the usual”?’ I asked.

It emerged that ‘the usual’ in Civil Service terms is to secure your budget, staff and premises and then quietly change your remit. In 1906 they changed the first sentence to ‘The Department exists to further the efficient and economic administration of Government.’ This removed the responsibility.

In 1931 they got it down to ‘The Department exists to support all government departments in their pursuit of economic and efficient administration’ which pushed the responsibility on to other departments. And by 1972 they had got rid of the embarrassing notions of economy and efficiency, and since then it has said ‘The purpose of the DAA is to support and service the administrative work of all government departments.’ The last vestige of the Department’s real purpose removed in a mere one hundred and four years, and the Department itself one hundred and six times its original size.

I now see why Bernard is fascinated, but I still could hardly stay awake to the end of paragraph one. Perhaps it was just the jet-lag. Anyway, Bernard reminded me that the press will be there tomorrow – so I had no choice but to get down to it.

October 5th

I had my first experience of being grilled by a Select Committee today and I didn’t like it one bit.

It all happens in a committee room at the House, a large gloomy Gothic room with an air of Greyfriars school about it. I was made to feel a bit like Billy Bunter caught with his hands in someone else’s tuckbox.

Along one side of a long table sit about nine MPs with the Chairman in the middle. On the Chairman’s right is the secretary, a civil servant, who takes minutes. There are a few seats for the public and the press.

I was allowed to have Bernard with me, sitting slightly behind me of course, plus Peter Wilkinson and Gillian something-or-other from the Department. (Assistant Secretaries – Ed.)

I was allowed to make an opening statement. I’d done my homework well, and I reiterated everything that Sir Humphrey said in his submission: namely that the Department of Administrative Affairs is run to a high standard of efficiency and does indeed support and service the administrative work of all government departments.

Mrs Betty Oldham began the questioning. She tossed her red hair and smiled a thin, mirthless smile. Then she asked me if I’d heard of Malcolm Rhodes.

I hadn’t. I said so.

She went on to inform me that he is an ex-Assistant Secretary from the DAA. I started to explain that as there are twenty-three thousand people working for the DAA I can hardly be expected to know them all, when she shouted me down (well, spoke over me really) and said that he was eased out, became a management consultant in America and has written a book.

She waved a pile of galley proofs at me.

‘This is an advance proof,’ she announced, with a glance at the press seats, ‘in which Mr Rhodes makes a number of astounding allegations of waste of public money in the British Civil Service, particularly your Department.’

I was stumped. I really didn’t know how to reply. I asked for a quick private word with my officials.

I turned to Bernard. ‘Do we know anything about this?’ I whispered urgently.

Peter said, ‘I didn’t know Rhodes had written a book.’

Gillian just said: ‘Oh my God, oh my God!’ That really filled me with confidence.

I asked who he was. Gillian said, ‘A troublemaker, Minister.’ Peter said he wasn’t sound, the ultimate insult.

Bernard, who clearly knew even less about him than Peter and Gillian, asked what was in the book.

‘We don’t know.’

‘Well, what do I say about it?’ I whispered hysterically, aware that time was running out.

‘Stall,’ advised Peter.

That was a big help. I’d have to say something. ‘Stall?’ I said indignantly. ‘What do you mean by it, stall?’

‘Stall, meaning avoiding answering, Minister,’ interjected Bernard. Like headless chickens in a crisis, these civil servants.

I gritted my teeth. ‘I know what stall means, Bernard.’ I was trying, not altogether successfully, to keep my temper. ‘But what do you mean by sending me out into a typhoon without even giving me an umbrella?’

‘An umbrella wouldn’t be much use in a typhoon, Minister, because the wind would get underneath and . . .’

The Chairman called upon me at that moment, which was just as well or Bernard might never have lived to tell the tale.

‘Have you had sufficient consultation with your officials?’ asked the Chairman.