The Complete Yes Minister

Bernard Woolley, MA (Cantab)

The Rt Hon. James Hacker, PC, MP, BSc. (Econ)

Sir Arnold Robinson, GCMG, CVO, MA (Oxon) – Ed.]

April 28th

This morning Humphrey badgered me again.

‘Two things,’ he said. ‘First, there is the matter of the Departmental recommendations for the Honours List.’

I told him we’d leave that on one side for a bit.

He became very tense and twitchy. I tried not to show amusement. He told me we can’t leave it as we are getting dangerously close to the five weeks.

[All recipients of honours are notified at least five weeks before promulgation. Theoretically it gives them time to refuse. This is rare. In fact, the only time a civil servant is known to have refused a knighthood was in 1496. This was because he already had one – Ed.]

I decided that I would not yet give my approval to the Department’s Honours List, because I’ve been doing some research. [Hacker almost certainly meant that a party research assistant had been doing some research and he had read the report – Ed.] I have found that twenty per cent of all honours go to civil servants. The rest of the population of this country have to do something extra to get an honour. Over and above their ordinary work, for which they get paid. You or I have to do something special, like work with mentally- handicapped children for twenty-seven years, six nights a week – then we might get an MBE. But Civil Service knighthoods just come up with the rations.

These honours are, in any case, intrinsically ridiculous – MBE, for instance, according to Whitaker’s Almanack, stands for Member of the Most Honourable Order of the British Empire. Hasn’t anyone in Whitehall noticed that we’ve lost the Empire?

The civil servants have been having it both ways for years. When Attlee was PM he got ?5000 a year and the Cabinet Secretary got ?2500. Now the Cabinet Secretary gets more than the PM. Why? Because civil servants used to receive honours as a compensation for long years of loyal public service, for which they got poor salaries, poor pensions and few perks.

Now they have salaries comparable to executives in the most successful private enterprise companies (guess who’s in charge of the comparability studies), inflation-proof pensions, chauffeur-driven cars – and they still get automatic honours.

[Hacker was right. The civil servants were undoubtedly manipulating the honours system to their own advantage. Just as incomes policies have always been manipulated by those that control them: for instance, the 1975 Pay Policy provided exemptions for Civil Service increments and lawyers’ fees. Needless to say, the policy was drafted by civil servants and parliamentary draftsmen, i.e. lawyers.

The problem is, quis custodiet ipsos custodes?³ – Ed.]

So how can civil servants possibly understand the way the rest of us live, if they are immune to the basic threats to economic well-being faced by the rest of us: inflation and unemployment?

And how did the civil servants get away with creating these remarkably favourable terms of service for themselves? Simply by keeping a low profile. They have somehow managed to make people feel that discussing the matter at all is in rather poor taste.

But that cuts no ice with me. I believe in action now!

I asked Humphrey how he accounted for twenty per cent of honours going to the Civil Service.

‘A fitting tribute to their devotion to duty,’ he said.

It’s a pretty nice duty to be devoted to, I thought.

Humphrey continued: ‘Her Majesty’s civil servants spend their lives working for a modest wage and at the end they retire into obscurity. Honours are a small recompense for a lifetime of loyal, self-effacing discretion and devoted service to Her Majesty and to the nation.’

A pretty speech. But quite ridiculous. ‘A modest wage?’ I queried.

‘Alas, yes.’

I explained to Humphrey, since he appeared to have forgotten, that he earned well over thirty thousand a year. Seven and a half thousand more than me.

He agreed, but insisted that it was still a relatively modest wage.

‘Relative to whom?’ I asked.

He was stuck for a moment. ‘Well . . . Elizabeth Taylor for instance,’ he suggested.

I felt obliged to explain to Sir Humphrey that he was in no way relative to Elizabeth Taylor. There are important differences.

‘Indeed,’ he agreed. ‘She did not get a First in Greats.’⁴

Then, undaunted and ever persistent, he again asked me if I had approved the list. I made my move.

‘No Humphrey,’ I replied pleasantly, ‘I am not approving any honour for anyone in this Department who hasn’t earned it.’

Humphrey’s face was a wonderful study in blankness.

‘What do you mean, earned it?’

I explained that I meant earned it. In other words, having done something to deserve it.