The Complete Yes Minister

In fact, the more I think about it, the more the Department appears to be an iceberg, with nine-tenths of it below the surface, invisible, unknown, and deeply dangerous. And I am forced to spend my life manicuring the tip of this iceberg.

My Department has a great purpose – to bring administration, bureaucracy and red tape under control. Yet everything that my officials do ensures that not only does the DAA not achieve its purpose, but that it achieves the opposite.

Unfortunately, most government departments achieve the opposite of their purpose: the Commonwealth Office lost us the Commonwealth, the Department of Industry reduces industry, the Department of Transport presided over the disintegration of our public transport systems, the Treasury loses our money – I could go on for ever.

And their greatest skill of all is the low profile. These so-called servants of ours are immune from the facts of life. The ordinary rules of living don’t apply to civil servants: they don’t suffer from inflation, they don’t suffer from unemployment, they automatically get honours.

Jobs are never lost – the only cuts are in planned recruitment. I have found out that there were just two exemptions to the 1975 policy of a mandatory five per cent incomes policy – annual increments and professional fees: annual increments because that is how civil servants get pay rises, and professional fees on the insistence of parliamentary Counsel, the lawyers who drafted the legislation. Otherwise the legislation would never have been drafted!

So what have I learned after nearly six months in office? Merely, it seems, that I am almost impotent in the face of the mighty faceless bureaucracy. However, it is excellent that I realise this because it means that they have failed to house-train me. If I were house-trained I would now believe a) that I am immensely powerful, and b) that my officials merely do my bidding.

So there is hope. And I am resolved that I shall not leave my office tomorrow until I have got right to the bottom of this strange mystery surrounding the Solihull project. There must be some way of finding out what’s going on.

March 8th

Today was a real eye-opener.

I hadn’t seen Sir Humphrey for some days. We met, at my request, to discuss the Solihull project. I explained that I had talked rather enthusiastically about the project on the air, but I am now having second thoughts.

‘Any particular reason?’ asked Sir Humphrey politely.

I didn’t beat about the bush. ‘Humphrey,’ I said, ‘is everything all right with the Solihull project?’

‘I believe the building works are proceeding quite satisfactorily, Minister,’ he replied smoothly.

I patiently explained that that was not quite what I meant. ‘What is going on?’ I asked.

‘Building is going on, Minister,’ he reported.

‘Yes,’ I said trying to keep my temper, ‘but . . . something is up, isn’t it?’

‘Yes indeed,’ he replied. At last I’m getting somewhere, I thought. I relaxed.

‘What is up?’ I said.

‘The first floor is up,’ said Sir Humphrey, ‘and the second is almost up.’

I began to show my annoyance. ‘Humphrey, please! I’m talking about the whole basis of the project.’

‘Ah,’ replied my Perm. Sec. gravely. ‘I see.’

‘What can you tell me about that?’

‘Well, as I understand it, Minister . . .’ here it comes, I thought, the truth at last, ‘. . . the basis is an aggregate of gravel and cement on six feet of best builder’s rubble.’

Does he take me for a complete fool?

‘Humphrey,’ I said sternly, ‘I think you know I am talking about the finance.’

So then he rabbited on about our contract with the construction company, and the usual stage payments, and all sorts of useless rubbish. I interrupted him.

‘What is it,’ I demanded, ‘that I don’t know?’

‘What do you mean, precisely?’ was his evasive reply.

In a state of mounting hysteria, I tried to explain. ‘I don’t know. It’s just that . . . there’s something I don’t know, and I don’t know because I can’t find the right question to ask you because I don’t know what to ask. What is it that I don’t know?’

Sir Humphrey feigned innocence.

‘Minister,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what you don’t know. It could be almost anything.’

‘But,’ I persisted, ‘you are keeping things from me, aren’t you?’

He nodded.

‘What?’ I was nearly at boiling point by now. He smiled patronisingly at me. It was quite intolerable. He explained that it is the Department’s duty to protect the Minister from the great tide of irrelevant information that beats against the walls of the Department day after day.

This was not the answer I was seeking. I stood up, and made one last attempt at explaining my problem – just in case he didn’t fully understand it. ‘Look Humphrey,’ I began, ‘there is something about the Solihull project that I know I don’t know, and I know you know. I know Bernard knows. Joe Morgan knows. For heaven’s sake, even my driver knows. It’s only poor old Joe Soap here who has to stand up and talk about it in front of the British people who