The Complete Yes Minister

Annie laughed. ‘Oh Jim, don’t be silly.’

I wasn’t amused. I gazed gloomily into the carefully arranged embers of the artificial gas log fire.

‘What are you sighing for?’ Annie asked.

I tried to explain.

‘What have I achieved?’ I asked. ‘Cathy was right.’

Annie suggested that, since Cathy and I had agreed I had all that power, I should go and achieve something forthwith. She will persist in making these silly suggestions.

‘You know I’m only a Cabinet Minister,’ I snapped.

Annie smiled. ‘It really does make you humble.’

My humility is not in question, and never has been. The point is that I can’t change anything in the foreseeable future. Changing things means getting bills through Parliament, and all the time’s been taken up for the next two years.

Annie was unimpressed.

‘Why don’t you reform the Civil Service?’ she suggested.

She makes it sound like one simple little task instead of a lifetime of dedicated carnage. Which reforms in particular did she have in mind, I wondered? Anyway, any real reform of the Civil Service is impossible, as I explained to her.

‘Suppose I thought up fifty terrific reforms. Who will have to implement them?’

She saw the point at once. ‘The Civil Service,’ we said in unison, and she nodded sympathetically. But Annie doesn’t give up easily.

‘All right,’ she suggested, ‘not fifty reforms. Just one.’

‘One?’

‘If you achieve one important reform of the Civil Service – that would be something.’

Something? It would get into the Guinness Book of Records. I asked her what she was proposing.

‘Make them put more women in top civil servants’ jobs. Women are half the population. Why shouldn’t they be half the Permanent Secretaries? How many women are there at the top?’

I tried to think. Certainly not many. I’d hardly come across any.

‘Equal opportunities,’ I said. I liked the sound it made. It has a good ring to it, that phrase. ‘I’ll have a go,’ I said. ‘Why not? There’s a principle at stake.’

Annie was delighted. ‘You mean you’re going to do something out of pure principle?’

I nodded.

‘Oh Jim,’ she said, with real love and admiration in her voice.

‘Principles,’ I added, ‘are excellent vote-winners.’

Shortly afterwards, Annie developed a headache and went to bed unusually early. I wanted to pursue the conversation with her but she seemed to have lost interest. Odd, that!

October 25th

Today I learned a thing or two about equal opportunities, or the lack of them, in the Civil Service.

Quite coincidentally I had a meeting with Sarah Harrison, who is the only woman Under-Secretary in the DAA.

Sarah really is a splendid person. Very attractive, intelligent, and about thirty-nine or forty years old, which is pretty young for an Under-Sec. She has a brisk and – I suppose – slightly masculine approach to meetings and so forth, but seems to be jolly attractive and feminine in spite of all that.

She has brought me a very difficult letter of complaint from one of the opposition front bench on a constituency matter; something to do with special powers for local authorities for land development in special development areas. I had no idea what it all meant or what I was supposed to do about it.

It turned out that I didn’t have to do anything about it. She explained that some of the facts were wrong, and other points were covered by statutory requirements so that I didn’t have any alternatives anyway.

This is the kind of Civil Service advice that makes a Minister’s life easy. No decision needed, not even an apology required. Nothing to do at all, in fact. Great.

I asked her to draft a reply, and she’d already done it. She handed it across my desk for me to sign. It was impeccable. I found myself wondering why they don’t make more Under-Secretaries like her – and realised that this was the moment to actually find out. So I asked her how many women are there at the top of the Civil Service.

She had an immediate answer to that question. ‘None of the Permanent Secretaries. Four out of one hundred and fifty odd Deputy Secretaries.’

I wondered silently if there are any that aren’t odd. Presumably not, not by the time they become Deputy Secretaries.

I asked her about her grade – Under-Secretary. As I expected, she knew the precise figure.

‘Oh, there’s twenty-seven of us.’