intended.
‘You have a considerable talent for making things unintelligible, Minister.’ My mouth must have dropped open, for he continued, ‘I mean it as a compliment, I assure you. Blurring issues is one of the basic ministerial skills.’
‘Pray tell me the others,’ I replied coldly.
Without hesitation he gave me a list. ‘Delaying decisions, dodging questions, juggling figures, bending facts and concealing errors.’
He’s quite right, as a matter of fact. But I didn’t see what else he could have expected me to do yesterday.
‘Couldn’t you have made it look as though you were doing something, and then done nothing? Like you usually do?’
I ignored that remark and tried to get at the facts. ‘Humphrey,’ I began, ‘if these revelations are true . . .’
He interrrupted rapidly. ‘If. Exactly! If! You could, for instance, have discussed the nature of truth.’
Now it was my turn to explain a thing or two. ‘The Select Committee couldn’t be less interested in the nature of truth – they’re all MPs.’
‘You should have said it was a security matter,’ said Humphrey, falling back on the usual first line of defence.
Completely idiotic! I asked him how HB pencils could be a security matter.
‘It depends what you write with them,’ he offered. Pathetic. He can’t really think I’d have got away with that.
‘And why on earth are we building roof gardens on offices?’ I asked.
‘We took over the office design from an American company that was going to occupy it. It just happened that nobody noticed the roof garden on the plans.’
I simply stared at him, incredulously.
‘A tiny mistake,’ he was defiant. ‘The sort anyone could make.’
‘Tiny?’ I could hardly believe my ears. ‘Tiny? Seventy-five thousand pounds. Give me an example of a big mistake.’
‘Letting people find out about it.’
Then I asked him why we are heating sheds full of wire.
‘Do you want the truth?’ he asked.
I was taken aback. It’s the first time he’s ever asked me that. ‘If it’s not too much trouble,’ I replied with magnificent condescension.
‘All the staff,’ he said, ‘use these sheds for growing mushrooms.’
I didn’t even know where to begin. So I kept it simple. ‘Stop them,’ I ordered.
He shook his head sadly, and sighed a heartfelt sigh. ‘But they’ve been doing it since 1945. It’s almost the only perk of a very boring job.’
I understand this argument, but it’s clearly untenable in public. So next I asked about Rhodes’s proposal for saving money on stationery orders. Why hadn’t we accepted it?
‘Minister,’ said Humphrey vehemently, ‘that man was a troublemaker. A crank. He had an unhealthy obsession about efficiency and economy.’
‘But why didn’t we adopt his proposal? It would have saved millions of pounds.’
‘It would have meant a lot of work to implement it.’
‘So?’
‘Taking on a lot more staff.’
This argument was manifest nonsense. I told him so. He seemed unbothered.
‘Disprove it,’ he challenged me.
‘I can’t, obviously.’
‘Exactly,’ he replied smugly.
I stared at him. I had suddenly realised what was going on. ‘You’re making all this up aren’t you?’ I said.
He smiled. ‘Of course.’
‘Why?’
He stood up.
‘As an example,’ he said in his most superior manner, ‘of how to handle a Select Committee.’
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