The Complete Yes Minister

The Death List

March 28th

It’s become clear to me, as I sit here for my usual Sunday evening period of contemplation and reflection, that Roy (my driver) knows a great deal more than I realised about what is going on in Whitehall.

Whitehall is the most secretive square mile in the world. The great emphasis on avoidance of error (which is what the Civil Service is really about, since that is their only real incentive) also means that avoidance of publication is equally necessary.

As Sir Arnold is reported to have said some months ago, ‘If no one knows what you’re doing, then no one knows what you’re doing wrong.’

[Perhaps this explains why government forms are always so hard to understand. Forms are written to protect the person who is in charge of the form – Ed.]

And so the way information is provided – or withheld – is the key to running the government smoothly.

This concern with the avoidance of error leads inexorably to the need to commit everything to paper – civil servants copy everything, and send copies to all their colleagues. (This is also because ‘chaps don’t like to leave other chaps out’, as Bernard once explained to me.) The Treasury was rather more competent before the invention of Xerox than it is now, because its officials had so much less to read (and therefore less to confuse them).

The civil servants’ hunger for paper is insatiable. They want all possible information sent to them, and they send all possible information to their colleagues. It amazes me that they find the time to do anything other than catch up with other people’s paperwork. If indeed they do.

It is also astonishing that so little of this vast mass of typescript ever becomes public knowledge – a very real tribute to Whitehall’s talent for secrecy. For it is axiomatic with civil servants that information should only be revealed to their political ‘masters’ when absolutely necessary, and to the public when absolutely unavoidable.

But I now see that I can learn some useful lessons from their methods. For a start, I must pay more attention to Bernard and Roy. I resolve today that I will not let false pride come between Roy and me – in other words, I shall no longer pretend that I know more than my driver does. Tomorrow, when he collects me at Euston, I shall ask him to tell me anything that he has picked up, and I shall tell him that he mustn’t assume that Ministers know more secrets than drivers.

On second thoughts, I don’t need to tell him that – he knows already!

As to the Private Secretaries’ grapevine, it was most interesting to learn last week that Sir Humphrey had had a wigging from Sir Arnold. This will have profoundly upset Humphrey, who above all values the opinions of his colleagues.

For there is one grapevine with even more knowledge and influence than the Private Secretaries’ or the drivers’ – and that is the Permanent Secretaries’ grapevine. (Cabinet colleagues, of course, have a hopeless grapevine because they are not personal friends, don’t know each other all that well, and hardly ever see each other except in Cabinet or in the Division Lobby.)

This wigging could also, I gather, affect his chances of becoming Secretary to the Cabinet on Arnold’s retirement, or screw up the possibility of his finding a cushy job in Brussels.

Happily, this is not my problem – and, when I mentioned it to my spies, both Bernard and Roy agreed (independently) that Sir Humphrey would not be left destitute. Apart from his massive indexlinked pension, a former Permanent Secretary is always fixed up with a job if he wants it – Canals and Waterways, or something.

As for Bernard, I have recently been impressed with his loyalty to me. He seems to be giving me all the help he possibly can without putting his own career at risk. In fact, I am almost becoming concerned about the amount of rapport, decency and goodwill that exists between us – if he exhibits a great deal more of these qualities he will almost certainly be moved elsewhere. There may come a time when the Department feels that the more use he is to me the less use he is to them.

March 29th

I was sitting at my desk this afternoon going through some letters when Bernard sidled in holding something behind his back.

‘Excuse me, Minister,’ he said. ‘There’s something in the press about you that I think you ought to see.’

I was pleased. ‘About me? That’s nice.’

Bernard looked bleak. ‘Well . . .’ he swallowed, ‘I’m afraid it’s in Private Eye.’

Trembling, I took the offending rag and held it away from me with my forefinger and thumb. I didn’t have the courage to open it. Normally the press officer brings you your own press cuttings. If he’d given his job to Bernard, it meant terrible news. No prizes for guessing which, in the case of Private Eye.

‘They’re . . . um . . . exposing something,’ said Bernard.

Panic thoughts flashed through my mind. In that instant my whole life passed before me. Was it that IOS Consultancy, I wondered? Or that character reference I wrote for Dr Savundra? Or that wretched party at John Poulson’s?

I didn’t even dare mention them to Bernard. So I put a good face on it. ‘Well,’ I said, chin up, ‘what have they made up about me to put in their squalid little rag?’

‘Perhaps you’d better read it yourself,’ he said.

So I did.

It was acutely embarrassing.

I sent for Humphrey at once. I had to establish whether or not this lie was true.

One aspect of this squalid little story puzzled me in particular – ‘What does egregious mean?’ I asked Bernard.