The Complete Yes Minister

looked as though his teeth were being pulled out without an anaesthetic.

‘But it was so long ago,’ he said. ‘We can’t find out that sort of thing now.’

And then I went for the jugular. This was the moment I’d been waiting for. Little did I dream, after he had humiliated me in front of Richard Cartwright, that I would be able to return the compliment so soon.

And with the special pleasure of using his own arguments on him.

‘Of course we can find out,’ I said. ‘You were telling me that everything is minuted and full records are always kept in the Civil Service. And you were quite right. Well, legal documents concerning a current lease could not possibly have been thrown away.’

He stood. Panic was overcoming him. He made an emotional plea, the first time I can remember him doing such a thing. ‘Minister, aren’t we making too much of this? Possibly blighting a brilliant career because of a tiny slip thirty years ago. It’s not such a lot of money wasted.’

I was incredulous. ‘Forty million?’

‘Well,’ he argued passionately, ‘that’s not such a lot compared with Blue Streak, the TSR2, Trident, Concorde, high-rise council flats, British Steel, British Rail, British Leyland, Upper Clyde Ship Builders, the atomic power station programme, comprehensive schools, or the University of Essex.’

[In those terms, his argument was of course perfectly reasonable – Ed.]

‘I take your point,’ I replied calmly. ‘But it’s still over a hundred times more than the official in question can have earned in his entire career.’

And then I had this wonderful idea. And I added: ‘I want you to look into it and find out who it was, okay?’

Checkmate. He realised that there was no way out. Heavily, he sat down again, paused, and then told me that there was something that he thought I ought to know.

Surreptitiously I reached into my desk drawer and turned on my little pocket dictaphone. I wanted his confession to be minuted. Why not? All conversations have to be minuted. Records must be kept, mustn’t they?

This is what he said. ‘The identity of this official whose alleged responsibility for this hypothetical oversight has been the subject of recent speculation is not shrouded in quite such impenetrable obscurity as certain previous disclosures may have led you to assume, and, in fact, not to put too fine a point on it, the individual in question was, it may surprise you to learn, the one to whom your present interlocutor is in the habit of identifying by means of the perpendicular pronoun.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ I said.

There was an anguished pause.

‘It was I,’ he said.

I assumed a facial expression of deep shock. ‘Humphrey! No!’

He looked as though he was about to burst into tears. His fists clenched, knuckles whitened. Then he burst out. ‘I was under pressure! We were overworked! There was a panic! Parliamentary questions tabled.’ He looked up at me for support. ‘Obviously I’m not a trained lawyer, or I wouldn’t have been in charge of the legal unit.’

[True enough. This was the era of the generalist, in which it would have seemed sensible and proper to put a classicist in charge of a legal unit or a historian in charge of statistics – Ed.] ‘Anyway – it just happened. But it was thirty years ago, Minister. Everyone makes mistakes.’

I was not cruel enough to make him suffer any longer. ‘Very well Humphrey,’ I said in my most papal voice. ‘I forgive you.’

He was almost embarrassingly grateful and thanked me profusely.

I expressed surprise that he hadn’t told me. ‘We don’t have any secrets from each other, do we?’ I asked him.

He didn’t seem to realise that I had my tongue in my cheek. Nor did he give me an honest answer.

‘That’s for you to say, Minister.’

‘Not entirely,’ I replied.

Nonetheless, he was clearly in a state of humble gratitude and genuinely ready to creep. And now that he was so thoroughly softened up, I decided that this was the moment to offer my quid pro quo.

‘So what do I do about this?’ I asked. ‘I’ve promised to let The Mail see all the papers. If I go back on my word I’ll be roasted.’ I looked him straight in the eye. ‘On the other hand, I might be able to do something if I didn’t have this other problem on my plate.’

He knew only too well what I was saying. He’s done this to me often enough.

So, immediately alert, he asked me what the other problem was.

‘Being roasted by the press for disciplining the most efficient council in Britain.’

He saw the point at once, and adjusted his position with commendable speed.

After only a momentary hesitation he told me that he’d been thinking about South-West Derbyshire, that obviously we can’t change the law as such, but that it might be possible to show a little leniency.

We agreed that a private word to the Chief Executive would suffice for the moment, giving them a chance to mend their ways.

I agreed that this would be the right way to handle the council. But it still left one outstanding problem: how would I explain the missing papers to The Mail?

We left it there. Humphrey assured me that he would give the question his most urgent and immediate