The Complete Yes Minister

‘My majority,’ she replied quietly, ‘is ninety-one.’

I hadn’t realised. She certainly had a point. I don’t want to be responsible for jeopardising a government-held marginal, especially if the sitting MP is PPS to the PM.

She pressed home her argument. ‘And don’t forget that there are three government constituencies bordering onto mine – all marginal, all with majorities of well under two thousand.’

I didn’t know what to say. While I considered the position, Sir Humphrey spoke up again. ‘Miss Littler,’ he began, ‘may I intervene once more?’ She nodded. ‘The case for the BCC manufacturing Propanol is overwhelming – am I right, Minister?’

‘Overwhelming,’ I agreed.

‘It will create jobs,’ continued Humphrey fluently, ‘it will increase income for the Local Authority, and it will secure profitable export orders.’

‘Export orders,’ I agreed.

‘Furthermore,’ he continued, ‘the chemical has been declared safe by the FDA in Washington.’

‘Washington,’ I agreed.

‘We are having,’ he went on, ‘a report prepared here as well. The Minister regards this scheme as being wholly to the advantage of your constituency and the country.’

I chimed in. ‘And if the stuff is dangerous, I promise you I’ll stop it being made here. But if the report shows it’s harmless, that would be absurd, wouldn’t it?’

She sat still for a moment, staring at me, then at Humphrey. Then she stood up. She said she wasn’t satisfied. (I can’t blame her. If it were my constituency, I’m not sure I’d be satisfied either.) She advised me to remember that the party made me an MP – and that I certainly can’t go on being a Minister if our party loses the next election.

She’s got a point there too.

Also, I have a nasty feeling that the PM will hear her point of view before the end of the week.

Humphrey looked at me after she left, obviously asking for a go-ahead. I told him that I would consider the matter further, and told Bernard to put all the relevant papers in my box to take home and study. Then the decision should become clear.

June 8th

I’ve studied all the Propanol papers and I still don’t know what to do.

So I called a meeting with Humphrey to discuss the report on Propanol that we have commissioned. I’ve been wondering if it really will be conclusively in favour of Propanol, as Sir Humphrey and Sir Wally predict.

I asked if I should meet Professor Henderson, who is chairing the report, or writing it himself or something.

Humphrey said that there was no need for such a meeting. He is apparently a brilliant biochemist and was chosen with some care.

Naturally he was chosen with care. But to what end: to produce a report that backs Sir Wally and Sir Humphrey? Naturally he was. But surely none of them would be foolish enough to cook up a report saying that metadioxin were safe if, in fact, it were dangerous. Naturally not. I think I’m going round in circles.

There was another possibility that I could raise though. ‘Suppose he produces one of those cautious wait-and- see reports?’

‘In that case,’ said Sir Humphrey cheerfully, ‘we don’t publish it, we use the American report instead.’

I was completely torn. On the one hand, the scheme is a wonderful one – the jobs, the income etc. – if it works out safely! And I’m assured it will. But if there’s an accident after I have given the go-ahead . . . The consequences would be too awful to contemplate.

‘Is there any chance he’ll produce a report saying the stuff’s dangerous?’ I wanted to know.

Humphrey was plainly baffled. ‘No. No chance. It isn’t dangerous,’ he said.

He clearly is totally sincere on this issue. And yet he’s suggesting we don’t publish a cautious wait-and-see type report if that’s what Henderson writes.

‘Why would you consider suppressing the Henderson report?’

He was outraged. ‘I would never suppress it, Minister. I merely might not publish it.’

‘What’s the difference?’

‘All the difference in the world. Suppression is the instrument of totalitarian dictatorships. You can’t do that in a free country. We would merely take a democratic decision not to publish it.’

That makes sense. But what would I say to the press and to Parliament, I wondered? That we had hoped the Henderson Committee would show we’d made the right decision but instead they’ve said we cocked it up, so we’re pretending the report doesn’t exist? I offered this suggestion to Humphrey.

He was not amused. ‘Very droll, Minister,’ he remarked.

So I asked Humphrey, ‘What would I say, if I decided not to publish it?’

‘There is a well-established government procedure for suppressing – that is, not publishing – unwanted reports.’

This was news to me. I asked how it was done.

‘You discredit them,’ he explained simply.