The Complete Yes Minister

21 The Skeleton in the Cupboard

November 16th

An interesting situation emerged today from another meeting to which my old friend Dr Cartwright came.

It was a fairly dull routine meeting to start with, all about local government administration. As Humphrey predicted, our Department was increasing in size, staffing and budget. He is plainly in his element. So far, however, it hasn’t involved much in the way of policy decisions, which is where I come in.

We’d reached item seven on the agenda, and so far it had been pretty uneventful. The only interest had been in Bernard’s pedantic linguistic quibbles, about which he is becoming obsessional.

‘Item seven,’ I asked, ‘what’s it about?’

‘If I may just recapitulate,’ began Sir Humphrey.

Bernard made a little sign and caught my eye.

‘Yes Bernard?’

‘Um — one can’t actually recapitulate an item if one hasn’t started it yet,’ he volunteered.

Sir Humphrey, who doesn’t like to be corrected by anyone, let alone a mere Private Secretary, thanked him coldly and proceeded to complete his sentence, thus demonstrating to Bernard that the correction was both impertinent and unnecessary.

‘Thank you, Bernard, where would we be without you? Minister, may I just, recapitulating on our last meeting and on our submissions which you have doubtless received in your boxes…’

I was thoroughly amused, and not paying full attention. ‘Doubtless,’ I interrupted cheerfully, and then realised that I didn’t know what he was talking about. After all, they give me mountains of paper to read virtually every day, I can’t remember everything.

‘Which minutes?’ I asked.

‘On the proposal to take disciplinary action against the South-West Derbyshire County Council.’

I still had no idea what the proposal was. But I didn’t like to admit it, it’s always better to make them think that one is completely on top of the job. So I casually asked Bernard to remind me.

The problem was that the council in question had failed to complete their statutory returns and supply us with the statistical information that the DAA requires.

I asked what we were going to do about it. Apparently a policy decision was required from me. Sir Humphrey offered me assorted alternatives. ‘A rebuke from the Minister, a press statement about their incompetence, withholding various grants and allowances, or, ultimately, as you are no doubt fully aware…’

‘Yes, yes,’ I interrupted helpfully.

‘Good,’ he said, and fell silent.

Again I was in a bit of a hole. I had no idea what he’d been about to say. But clearly he was waiting for my comments.

‘I’m fully aware of… what?’ I prompted him.

‘What?’

‘What am I fully aware of?’

‘I can’t think of anything.’ Then he realised what he’d said because he added hastily, ‘I mean, I can’t think what you are…’

‘You were saying,’ I explained, feeling somewhat embarrassed by now. (After all, seven assorted officials of various ages and ranks were silently watching my display of confusion and ineptitude.) ‘You were saying: “ultimately, as I’m fully aware”…’

‘Ah yes, Minister.’ Now he was on the ball again. ‘Ultimately, taking the local authority to court.’

I asked if a failure to complete returns is all that serious.

Eight officials looked shocked! I was told categorically that it is not merely serious, but catastrophic!

I wanted to know why. Sir Humphrey was quick to explain.

‘If local authorities don’t send us the statistics we ask for, then government figures will be nonsense. They’ll be incomplete.’

I pointed out that government figures are a nonsense anyway. No one denied it, but Bernard suggested that Sir Humphrey wanted to ensure that they are a complete nonsense.

He was rewarded with another withering look from his boss.

I was worried about making an example of South-West Derbyshire, which I happened to know is controlled by my party. Humphrey realised that this was on my mind, and raised the matter with me. I responded by suggesting that we pick on an opposition council instead.

This went down badly. I can’t see why. What does he expect? Anyway, the suggestion was met with pursed lips from Sir Humphrey, and everyone else looked down at their blotters.

So I asked if South-West Derbyshire are really all that bad. And suddenly everyone had plenty to say.

One Under-Sec. told me that they won’t return their blue forms (whatever they are, something to do with finance I think). An Assistant-Sec. told me that they replied to the DAA’s Ethnic Personnel Breakdown Request in longhand, on the back of a departmental circular. And a delightfully attractive lady Assistant-Sec. was appalled because she still hadn’t received their Social Worker Revised Case-load Analysis for the last two quarters. Or their Distributed Data Processing Appropriation Tables. ‘They’re unbelievable,’ she said. ‘Really evil.’

This was a definition of evil? Someone who doesn’t return his blue form? ‘Yes,’ I said with heavy irony, ‘I don’t see how life still goes on in South Derbyshire.’

Sir Humphrey took my remark at face value. ‘Exactly, Minister. They really are in a class of their own for incompetence.’

Still worried about my party problems, I enquired if they had no redeeming features. And my old friend Dr Cartwright piped up cheerfully. ‘Well, it is interesting that…’

Sir Humphrey cut right across him. ‘So if that’s all right, Minister, we can take appropriate coercive action?’

Dr Cartwright had another try. ‘Except that the Minister might…’

Again Sir Humphrey interrupted him. ‘So can we take it you approve?’ It was all beginning to look distinctly fishy.

I decided not to give an immediate answer. ‘It’s a difficult one. They’re friends of ours.’

‘They’re no friends of good administration.’

I refused to be pressured. ‘Give me twenty-four hours. I’ll have to square the party organisation. Get the Chairman invited to a drinkies do at Number Ten or something. Soften the blow.’

And I insisted that we press on to the next item.

As the meeting broke up I noticed Dr Cartwright hovering, as if he wanted a private word with me. But Sir Humphrey took him by the arm and gently guided him away. ‘I need your advice, Dick, if you could spare me a moment.’ And they were gone.

Having thought about this overnight, I think I’ll question Bernard more closely tomorrow.

November 17th

A fascinating day.

I raised the matter with Bernard as soon as I got to the office. I told him that my instincts told me that there is a good reason not to discipline South-West Derbyshire.

‘Furthermore, Dr Cartwright seemed to be trying to tell me something. I think I’ll drop in on him.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t do that, Minister,’ he said rather too hastily.

‘Why not?’

He hesitated. ‘Well, it is, er, understood that if Ministers need to know anything it will be brought to their attention. If they go out looking for information, they might, er they might…’

‘Find it?’

‘Yes.’ He looked sheepish.

I remarked that it may be ‘understood’, but it’s not understood by me.

Bernard obviously felt he had better explain further. ‘Sir Humphrey does not take kindly to the idea of Ministers just dropping in on people. “Going walkabout”, he calls it.’

I couldn’t see anything wrong with that. I reminded him that the Queen does it.

He disagreed. ‘I don’t think she drops in on Under-Secretaries. Not in Sir Humphrey’s department.’

I took a firm line. I asked Bernard for Dr Cartwright’s room number.

He virtually stood to attention. ‘I must formally advise you against this, Minister,’ he said.

‘Advice noted,’ I said. ‘What’s his room number?’

‘Room 4017. Down one flight, second corridor on the left.’

I told him that if I wasn’t back within forty-eight hours he could send a search party.

SIR BERNARD WOOLLEY RECALLS:[58]

I well recall the day that Hacker went walkabout. This was the kind of situation that highlighted the dilemma of a Minister’s Private Secretary. On the one hand I was expected to be loyal to the Minister, and any sign of disloyalty to him would mean that I had blotted my copybook. On the other hand, Sir Humphrey was my Permanent Secretary, my career was to be in the Civil Service for the next thirty years, and I owed a loyalty there also.

This is why high-flyers are usually given a spell as Private Secretary. If one can walk the tightrope with skill and manage to judge what is proper when there is a conflict, then one may go straight to the top, as I did.

[‘Walking the tightrope’ is Sir Bernard’s phrase for betraying confidences from each side to the other while remaining undetected — Ed.]

After the Minister left his office I telephoned Graham Jones, Sir Humphrey Appleby’s Private Secretary. I let him know that the Minister had gone walkabout. I had no choice but to do this, as I had received specific instructions from Sir Humphrey that this should be discouraged [i.e. prevented. — Ed.].

I actually counted out ten seconds on my watch, from the moment I replaced the receiver, so well did I know the distance from his office to the Minister’s, and Sir Humphrey entered the office on the count of ‘ten’.

He asked me what had happened. Carefully playing it down, I told him that the Minister had left his own office. Nothing more.

Sir Humphrey seemed most upset that Hacker was, to use his words, ‘loose in the building’. He asked me why I had not stopped him.

As it was my duty to defend my Minister, even against the boss of my own department, I informed Sir Humphrey that (a) I had advised against it, but (b) he was the Minister, and there was no statutory prohibition on Ministers talking to their staff.

He asked me to whom the Minister was talking. I evaded the question, as was my duty — clearly the Minister did not want Sir Humphrey to know. ‘Perhaps he was just restless’ is what I think I said.

I recall Sir Humphrey’s irritable reply: ‘If he’s restless he can feed the ducks in St James’s Park.’

Again he asked who the Minister was talking to, and again I evaded — under more pressure by this time — by seeking confirmation that the Minister could talk to anyone he liked.

Sir Humphrey’s reply made it clear to me that he attached the greatest departmental importance to the issue. ‘I am in the middle of writing your annual report,’ he told me. ‘It is not a responsibility that either of us would wish me to discharge while I am in a bad temper.’ Then he asked me again to whom the Minister was talking.

I realised that I had gone as far as I safely could in defending the Minister’s interests. And yet as his Private Secretary, I had to be seen to be standing up for him.

So I resorted to a well-tried formula. I asked for Sir Humphrey’s help. Then I said: ‘I can quite see that you should be told if the Minister calls on an outsider. But I can’t see that it is necessary to inform you if he just wanted, to take a purely hypothetical example, to check a point with, say, Dr Cartwright….’

He interrupted me, thanked me, and left the room. I called ‘4017’ after him — well, why not?

I had passed the test with flying colours. I had managed to see that Sir Humphrey knew what he wanted, without actually telling him myself.

The hypothetical example was, and is, an excellent way of dealing with such problems.

[Hacker’s diary continues — Ed.]

When I got to Cartwright’s office I certainly learned a thing or two. Cartwright was delighted to see me, and told me quite openly that I had been misled at yesterday’s meeting. I was intrigued.

‘But all those things they told me about South-West Derbyshire — aren’t they true?’

‘They may be, for all I know.’

I asked him precisely what he was saying. To my surprise I got a completely straight answer. I can see why he’s going to rise no higher.

‘I’m saying that, nevertheless, South-West Derbyshire is the most efficient local authority in the UK.’ And he blinked at me pleasantly from behind his half-moon reading glasses.

I was surprised, to say the least. ‘The most efficient? But I’m supposed to be ticking them off for being the least efficient.’

Then he showed the figures.

This in itself was a surprise, as I’d been told that they didn’t send us the figures. This was true — but no one had told me that they kept their own records perfectly well, which were available for us to see.

And the figures are impressive. They have the lowest truancy record in the Midlands, the lowest administrative costs per council house, the lowest ratio in Britain of council workers to rate income, and a clean bill of public health with the lowest number of environmental health officers.[59]

And that’s not all. It seems that virtually all the children can read and write, despite their teachers’ efforts to give them a progressive education. ‘And,’ Cartwright finished up, ‘they have the smallest establishment of social workers in the UK.’

From the way he reported this fact I gathered he thought that this was a good thing. I enquired further.

‘Oh yes. Very good. Sign of efficiency. Parkinson’s Law of Social Work, you see. It’s well known that social problems increase to occupy the total number of social workers available to deal with them.’

It was at this critical juncture that Sir Humphrey burst into Cartwright’s office. I believe that his arrival in Cartwright’s office at that moment was no coincidence.

We had a pretty stilted conversation.

‘Oh, Minister! Good Heavens!’

‘Oh. Hello Humphrey!’

‘Hello Minister.’

‘What a coincidence.’

‘Yes. Indeed. What a surprise.’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes.’

For some reason he was making me feel guilty, and I found myself trying to explain my presence there.

‘I was just, er, passing.’

‘Passing?’

‘Yes. Passing.’

‘Passing. I see.’ He considered my explanation for a moment. ‘Where were you going?’

I was trapped. I had no idea what else was on Cartwright’s floor. I decided to be vague.

‘Oh,’ I said airily, ‘I was just going… past.’ I said it as if ‘past were a specific place to go. ‘Past the door,’ I added. I was aware that I sounded fearfully unconvincing but I blundered on. ‘Cartwright’s — Richard’s door. Dick’s door. So I thought “hello”!’

‘And then did you think anything further?’ He is relentless.

‘Yes. I thought, why should I just pass the door? I might as well… open it.’

‘Good thinking, Minister. That’s what doors are for.’

‘Quite.’ I summoned up my courage and finally got to the point. ‘And I’d remembered one or two points I wanted to clear up.’

‘Good. What points?’

I couldn’t see why I should tell him. Or why I shouldn’t be in Cartwright’s office. Or why he was successfully making me feel guilty? Or why he should consider that he had the right to approve everything that the DAA staff say to me. He behaves as though they are his staff, not mine. [They were — Ed.]

But I also couldn’t see how not to answer him.

‘Oh, just some odd points,’ I replied finally, making a suitably vague gesture.

He waited. Silence. Then he repeated it. ‘Just some odd points.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘How odd?’ he asked.

‘Well it’s not all that odd,’ I said, argumentatively, wilfully misunderstanding him. ‘We had a meeting yesterday, didn’t we?’

Sir Humphrey was now tired of the fencing.

‘Minister, may I have a word with you?’

‘Certainly,’ I said, ‘as soon as Richard and I have…’

He interrupted. ‘I mean now.’

Now it was my turn to embarrass him a little. ‘Okay. Go ahead.’ I knew he wouldn’t want to talk in front of one of his juniors.

‘Upstairs, Minister, in your office if you please.’

‘But I’m sure Richard doesn’t mind.’

‘Upstairs, Minister. I’m sure Dr Cartwright can spare you for a few moments.’

Cartwright missed the heavy sarcasm completely. ‘Oh yes,’ he said with an obliging smile.

Sir Humphrey opened the door. Having been made to feel like a naughty schoolboy, I marched out of Cartwright’s office.

I wonder how he knew I was in that office. I know Bernard wouldn’t have told him, so somebody must have seen me and reported it. I might as well be in the Soviet Union. Somehow I’ve got to get my freedom — but that involves winning the psychological war against Humphrey. And somehow, he always manages to make me feel guilty and unsure of myself.

If only I could find a chink in his armour. If I ever do, he’s had it!

Anyway, that tense little sparring match in Cartwright’s office wasn’t the end of the matter. A few minutes later, back in my office after an icy silent journey up in the lift and along the endless corridors, the row came to a head.

He told me that I cannot just go around talking to people in the Department, and expressed the sincere hope that such a thing would not occur again.

I could scarcely believe my ears. I ordered him to explain himself.

‘Minister, how can I advise you properly if I don’t know who’s saying what to whom? I must know what’s going on. You simply cannot have completely private meetings. And what if you’re told things that aren’t true?’

‘If they’re not true you can put me right.’

‘But they may be true.’

‘In that case…’ I began triumphantly. He interrupted me, correcting himself hastily.

‘That is, not entirely false. But misleading. Open to misinterpretation.’

I faced him with a straight question. ‘The fact is, you’re just trying to keep things from me, aren’t you, Humphrey?’

He was indignant. ‘Absolutely not, Minister. Records must be kept. You won’t be here forever, nor will we. In years to come it may be vital to know what you were told. If Cartwright were moved tomorrow, how could we check on your information?’

On the face of it, that was a specious argument. ‘Cartwright isn’t being moved tomorrow,’ I said.

‘Oh, isn’t he?’ came the insolent response.

Bernard interrupted us. Alex Andrews of The Mail wanted to do an interview with me for tomorrow. I agreed of course. I told Bernard to stay with us and minute our conversation. Humphrey had given me his views on my private meeting with Cartwright. Now he was going to hear mine.

I began by repeating what Cartwright had told me: namely, that in his opinion — and the opinion of everyone who knows anything about local government — the South-West Derbyshire County Council is the most efficient in the country.

‘Inefficient, I think he means, Minister.’

‘Efficient, Humphrey. Effective. Economical. They’re just not particularly interested in sending pieces of blue paper to Whitehall.’

Humphrey then explained something that I hadn’t quite grasped yet. Apparently they have to return those sodding blue forms, it’s a statutory requirement.

And we know why. We know who decreed that it should be so.

Even so, statutory requirements can be overlooked occasionally. Discretion can be exercised. So I asked Humphrey what happens if they don’t send in their blue forms. South-West Derbyshire carries on, rather well apparently.

‘But,’ said Humphrey, not seeing at all what I was getting at, ‘if they don’t send us the information and plans and requests for permission, well, what are we here for?’

An excellent question, as I told him immediately. I asked it at once. ‘What are we here for?’

‘To collate the information, inspect the plans, and grant or withhold permission.’

‘And if we didn’t?’ I asked.

He gazed at me studiously. I might have been talking Ancient Chinese, for all the sense I was making to him.

‘I’m sorry, Minister, I don’t understand.’

I persevered. ‘If we didn’t. If we weren’t here and we didn’t do it — then what?’

‘I’m sorry, Minister, you’ve lost me.’

Yet again, Humphrey demonstrates that his trouble is that he is concerned with means and not ends.

[Many civil servants of the time deflected criticisms about ends and means by stating flippantly that the only ends in administration are loose ends. If administration is viewed in a vacuum this is, of course, true. Administration can have no end in itself, and is eternal. For ever and ever, amen — Ed.]

[Hacker’s diary continues — Ed.]

The upshot of the whole argument was that I refused to discipline the most efficient local authority in Britain, on the grounds that I would look like an idiot if I did.

Sir Humphrey told me that was my job. I think he meant to discipline South-West Derbyshire, rather than to look like an idiot, but I’m not certain. He said that I had no alternative to consider, no discretion to exercise, and that the Treasury and the Cabinet Office insist.

[By Cabinet Office Sir Humphrey clearly meant the Cabinet Secretary rather than the PM. But he could never have said so — the fiction had to be preserved that Britain was governed by Ministers who told civil servants what to do, not vice versa — Ed.]

I still refused to co-operate.

‘Minister. You don’t seem to understand. It’s not up to you or me. It’s the law.’

And there we left it. I felt a bit like a dog refusing to go for a walk — sitting down and digging in my paws while being dragged along the pavement on my bottom.

But there must be some way out. The more I think of it, the less willing I am to discipline that council until there is really no alternative.

And the more I think of it, the more I conclude that Bernard must have told Humphrey that I’d gone to talk to Cartwright.

November 18th

I had no free time to talk to Bernard on his own yesterday.

But first thing this morning, while I was doing my letters, I had a serious word with Bernard. I asked him how Humphrey had found out yesterday that I was with Cartwright.

‘God moves in a mysterious way,’ he said earnestly.

‘Let me make one thing quite clear,’ I said, ‘Sir Humphrey is not God. Okay?’

Bernard nodded. ‘Will you tell him, or shall I?’ he replied.

Very droll. But again I asked him how Humphrey knew where to find me.

I am fortunate that my dictaphone had been left running. I noticed it some minutes later. As a result I am able to record his reply for posterity in this diary.

‘Confidentially, Minister, everything you tell me is in complete confidence. So, equally, and I’m sure you appreciate this, and by appreciate I don’t actually mean appreciate, I mean understand, that everything that Sir Humphrey tells me is in complete confidence. As indeed everything I tell you is in complete confidence. And for that matter, everything I tell Sir Humphrey is in complete confidence.’

‘So?’ I said.

‘So, in complete confidence, I am confident you will understand that for me to keep Sir Humphrey’s confidence and your confidence means that my conversations must be completely confidential. As confidential as conversations between you and me are confidential, and I’ll just get Alex Andrews as he’s been waiting to see you, Minister.’

There it is. Word for word. What was I supposed to make of that? Nothing, of course.

My meeting with Alex Andrews of The Mail was today. I’d been very keen to fit him in at the earliest opportunity. I’d been hoping for a Profile, or something of that sort, but no such luck. Still, I’ve done him a good turn today, it’s no skin off my nose, and perhaps he’ll do the same for me one day.

He asked for my help in a fascinating story that he had just come across. ‘Did you know that your government is about to give away forty million pounds’ worth of buildings, harbour installations, a landing-strip, to a private developer? For nothing?’

I thought he was having me on. ‘Forty million pounds?’

‘Scout’s Honour.’

‘Why ask me?’ I said. Suddenly I had a dreadful moment of panic. ‘I didn’t do it, did I?’

[You may think that Hacker should have known if he had done it. But a great many things are done in a Minister’s name, of which he may have little or no awareness — Ed.]

Alex smiled, and told me to relax. Thank God!

Then he told me the story. It goes back a long way. Almost thirty years ago the Ministry of Defence took a lease on a Scottish island. They put up barracks, married quarters, an HQ block, and the harbour and airstrip. Now the lease has expired and they all become the property of the original landowner. And he is turning it into an instant holiday camp. Chalets, yachting marina, staff quarters — it’s all there. He is going to make a fortune.

I listened, open-mouthed. ‘But he can’t do that!’ I began. ‘The law says that…’

Andrews interrupted me. ‘You’re talking about English law. This contract was under Scottish law and some idiot didn’t realise the difference.’

I was relieved that at least I am in the clear. Even The Mail can’t blame me for a cock-up in the early fifties. Though I’m sure they would if they could. And I couldn’t at first see what he wanted from me. He already had the story. Thirty years late, as quick with the news as ever — still, not bad for Fleet Street!

They are running the story tomorrow. But apparently they don’t want to leave it at that. The Editor wants Alex to follow up with an investigative feature. He wants him to go through the files, and find out exactly how it happened.

I couldn’t see the point, not now.

‘Well,’ he explained, ‘there may be lessons for today. And we might find who was responsible.’

I asked why it would matter? It would, in any case, have been handled by quite a junior official.

He nodded. ‘Okay, but that was thirty years ago. He could be in a very senior position now, even a Permanent Secretary, running a great department, responsible for spending billions of pounds of public money.’

A very unlikely eventuality, in my opinion. These hacks will do anything to try and find a story where there isn’t one.

He agreed it was pretty unlikely. But he asked to see the papers.

Naturally I had to be a bit cautious about that. I can’t just hand files over, as he well knows. But I advised him that, as it was a thirty-year lease that was in question, he would be able to get the papers from the Public Record Office under the Thirty-Year Rule.

He was unimpressed. ‘I thought you’d say that. I’ve asked for them already. But I want a guarantee that I will get them. All of them.’

I hate being asked to guarantee anything. I don’t really think it’s fair. And anyway, was I in a position to? ‘Well,’ I said, carefully feeling my way, ‘Defence papers are sometimes…’

He interrupted me. ‘Don’t come that one. It’s not top security. Look, you made a manifesto commitment about telling voters the facts. This is a test case. Will you guarantee that no papers are removed before the files are opened?’

I could see no reason not to give him that guarantee. ‘Fine,’ I said, throwing caution to the winds. ‘No problem.’

‘Is that a promise?’ Journalists are suspicious bastards.

‘Sure,’ I said with a big reassuring smile.

‘A real promise? Not a manifesto promise?’

Some of these young Fleet Street fellows can be really rather insulting.

‘Your trouble, Alex,’ I said, ‘is that you can’t take yes for an answer.’

‘Because otherwise,’ he continued as if I hadn’t even spoken, ‘we do the feature on Ministers ratting on manifestos.’

Clearly I shall now have to stand by that promise. It’s fortunate that I have every intention of doing so.

[The following day The Mail ran the story, exactly as predicted in Hacker’s diary (see below). That night Sir Humphrey’s diary contains the following entry — Ed.]

Horrible shock.

A story in today’s Mail about the Glenloch Island base.

I read it on the 8.32 from Haslemere to Waterloo. Was seized instantly by what Dr Hindley calls a panic attack. A sort of tight feeling in the chest, I felt I couldn’t breathe, and I had to get up and walk up and down the compartment which struck one or two of the regulars on the 8.32 as a bit strange. Or perhaps I just think that because of the panic attack.

Fortunately Valium did the trick as the day wore on, and I’ll take a few Mogadon[60] tonight.

I tell myself that no one will ever connect that incident with me, and that it’s all ancient history anyway, and that that’s the last that anyone will want to know about it.

I tell myself that — but somehow it’s not helping!

Why has this come up now, so many years later, when I thought it was all forgotten?

If only there was someone I could talk to about this.

Oh my God…

[Hacker’s diary continues — Ed.]

November 21st

They ran that story in The Mail today. Quite amusing.

November 22nd

Today was the happiest day of my ministerial life.

All my prayers were answered.

As Humphrey and I were finishing up our weekly departmental meeting I asked him if he’d seen the story in yesterday’s Mail.

‘I’m not sure,’ he said.

I reminded him. I knew he must have seen it, someone must have drawn his attention to it. ‘You know,’ I added, ‘about that frightful cock-up thirty years ago over the terms of that Scottish island base.’

Now, as I think back, he seemed to flinch a little as I said ‘that frightful cock-up’. Though I must say, I wasn’t really aware of it at the time.

Anyway, he did remember the article, and he said that he believed that he had glanced at it, yes.

‘I must say,’ I said, chuckling, ‘I think it’s pretty funny — forty million quid down the tube. Someone really boobed there, didn’t they?’

He nodded and smiled, a little wanly.

‘Still, it couldn’t happen in your Department could it?’

‘No,’ he said with absolute firmness. ‘Oh no. Absolutely.’

I said that I’d been wondering who it was.

‘That, Minister, is something that we shall never know.’

I pointed out that it must be on the files. Everything is always put in writing, as he so constantly reminds me.

Humphrey agreed that it would be on the record somewhere, but it would take ages to find out and it’s obviously not worth anyone’s time.

‘Actually, you’re wrong there,’ I said. ‘The Mail are doing a big feature on it when the papers are released under the Thirty-Year Rule. I’ve promised them a free run of all the files.’

Humphrey literally rocked backwards on his feet.

‘Minister!’

I was slightly shaken by his anger. Or was it anger? I couldn’t tell.

‘It’s all right, isn’t it?’ I asked anxiously.

Yes, it was anger! ‘All right? All right? No, it is certainly not all right.’

I asked why not. He told me it was ‘impossible and unthinkable’. That didn’t sound like much of an explanation to me, and I said as much.

‘It… it’s… top security, Minister.’

‘A few barracks?’

‘But there were secret naval installations, anti-submarine systems, low-level-radar towers.’

I pointed out that he couldn’t possibly know what had been there. He agreed at once, but added — rather lamely, I thought — that that’s the sort of thing those island bases always had.

‘They’ll have been dismantled,’ I said. His objection was clearly quite irrelevant.

‘But the papers will have references.’

‘It’s ancient history.’

‘Anyway,’ he said with evident relief, ‘we’d have to consult. Get clearances.’

A few months ago I would have accepted that sort of remark from Humphrey. Now, I’m just a little older and wiser.

‘Who from?’ I asked.

He looked wildly about, and spoke completely incoherently. ‘Security implications… MI5, MI6… the national interest… foreign powers… consult our allies… top brass… CIA… NATO, SEATO, Moscow!’

‘Humphrey,’ I asked carefully, ‘are you all right?’

‘Not Moscow, no, I don’t mean Moscow,’ he corrected himself hastily. I got the impression that he was just saying the first words that came into his head, and that the word Moscow had been uttered simply because it rhymed.

He could see I wasn’t convinced, and added: ‘There could be information that would damage people still alive.’

This seemed to matter to him greatly. But it cut no ice with me.

‘Whoever drafted that contract,’ I insisted, ‘ought to be damaged if he’s still alive.’

‘Oh, quite, absolutely, no question of protecting officials. Of course not. But responsible Ministers…’

I interrupted him. I wasn’t the least concerned about some Minister who’d been responsible thirty years ago. It couldn’t matter less. Anyway, the other lot were in office then, so it’s fairly amusing.

I simply couldn’t figure out the reason for his intense opposition to releasing these papers. I asked him why he was so concerned.

He sat back in his chair and crossed his legs casually. ‘I’m not. Not at all. I mean, not personally. But it’s the principle, the precedent… the… the…’ he was lost for words ‘… the policy.’

Trapped. I’d got him. ‘Policy’s up to me, Humphrey, remember?’ I said with a smile. And before he could continue the argument I added, ‘And I’ve promised, so it’s done now, okay?’

He just sat there, sagging slightly, looking at me. Evidently he was trying to decide whether or not to say something. Finally he gave up. He stood wearily and, without looking at me, walked silently out of the room and shut the door behind him.

He seemed tired, listless, and quite without his usual energy.

Bernard had been present throughout the meeting. He waited, patiently, as usual, to be either used or dismissed.

I gazed at the door which Humphrey had closed quietly behind him.

‘What’s the matter with Humphrey?’ I asked. There was no reply from Bernard. ‘Have I done something wrong?’ Again there was no reply. ‘There aren’t any security aspects, are there?’ This time I waited a while, but answer came there none. ‘So what is the problem?’ I turned to look at Bernard, who appeared to be staring vacantly into space like a contented heifer chewing the cud.

‘Am I talking to myself?’

He turned his gaze in my direction.

‘No Minister, I am listening.’

‘Then why don’t you reply?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I thought your questions were purely rhetorical. I can see no reason for Sir Humphrey to be so anxious.’

And then the penny dropped.

Suddenly I saw it.

I didn’t know how I could have been so blind. So dumb. And yet, the answer — obvious though it was — seemed scarcely credible.

‘Unless…’ I began, and then looked at Bernard. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’

He looked puzzled. ‘I don’t think so, Minister,’ he replied cautiously, and then added with a flash of cheerful honesty, ‘I’m not thinking anything really.’

‘I think,’ I said, uncertain how to broach it, ‘that I smell a rat.’

‘Oh. Shall I fetch an Environmental Health Officer?’

I didn’t like actually to put my suspicions into words. Not yet. I thought I’d go carefully. So I asked Bernard how long Sir Humphrey had been here at the Department of Administrative Affairs.

‘Oh, all his career, hasn’t he? Ever since it was founded.’

‘When was that?’ I asked.

‘1964. Same time that they started the Department of Economic Affairs…’ he stopped dead, and stared at me, wide-eyed. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Now I think I’m thinking what you’re thinking.’

‘Well?’ I asked.

He wanted to be cautious too. ‘You’re thinking: where was he before 1964?’

I nodded slowly.

‘It’ll be in Who’s Who.’ He stood, then hurried to the glass-fronted mahogany bookcase near the marble fireplace. He fished out Who’s Who, talking as he leafed through the pages. ‘He must have been in some other Department, and been trawled when the DAA started. [‘Trawled’, i.e. caught in a net, is the standard Civil Service word for ‘head-hunting’ through other departments — Ed.]

He ran his forefinger down a page, and said in one sentence: ‘Ah here we are oh my God!’

I waited.

Bernard turned to me. ‘From 1950 to 1956 he was an Assistant Principal at the Scottish Office. Not only that. He was on secondment from the War Office. His job was Regional Contracts Officer. Thirty years ago.’

There could be no doubt who the culprit was. The official who had chucked away that forty million pounds of the taxpayers’ money was the current Permanent Under-Secretary of the Department of Administrative Affairs, Sir Humphrey Appleby, KCB, MVO, MA (Oxon).

Bernard said, ‘This is awful,’ but his eyes were twinkling.

‘Terrible,’ I agreed, and found myself equally unable to prevent a smile creeping across my face. ‘And the papers are all due for release in a few weeks’ time.’

I suddenly felt awfully happy. And I told Bernard to get Humphrey back into my office at once.

He picked up the phone and dialled. ‘Hello Graham, it’s Bernard. The Minister wondered if Sir Humphrey could spare some time for a meeting some time in the next couple of days.’

‘At once,’ I said.

‘In fact, some time during the course of today is really what the Minister has in mind.’

‘At once,’ I repeated.

‘Or to be precise, any time within the next sixty seconds really.’

He listened for a moment, then replaced the receiver. ‘He’s coming round now.’

‘Why?’ I was feeling malicious. ‘Did he faint?’

We looked at each other in silence. And we both tried very hard not to laugh.

Bernard’s mouth was twitching from the strain.

‘This is very serious, Bernard.’

‘Yes Minister,’ he squeaked.

I was, by now, crying from the effort not to laugh. I covered my eyes and my face with my handkerchief.

‘No laughing matter,’ I said, in a strangled muffled gasp, and the tears rolled down my cheeks.

‘Absolutely not,’ he wheezed.

We recovered as best we could, shaking silently, but didn’t dare look at each other for a little while. I sat back in my chair and gazed reflectively at the ceiling.

‘The point is,’ I said, ‘how do I best handle this?’

‘Well, in my opinion…’

‘The question was purely rhetorical, Bernard.’

Then the door opened, and a desperately worried little face peeped around it.

It was Sir Humphrey Appleby. But not the Humphrey Appleby I knew. This was not a God bestriding the Department of Administrative Affairs like a colossus, this was a guilty ferret with shifty beady eyes.

‘You wanted a word, Minister?’ he said, still half-hidden behind the door.

I greeted him jovially. I invited him in, asked him to sit down and — rather regretfully — dismissed Bernard. Bernard made a hurried and undignified exit, his handkerchief to his mouth, and curious choking noises emanating from it.

Humphrey sat in front of me. I told him that I’d been thinking about this Scottish island scandal, which I found very worrying.

He made some dismissive remark, but I persisted. ‘You see, it probably hasn’t occurred to you but that official could still be in the Civil Service.’

‘Most unlikely,’ said Sir Humphrey, presumably in the hope that this would discourage me from trying to find out.

‘Why? He could have been in his mid-twenties then. He’d be in his mid-fifties now,’ I was enjoying myself thoroughly. ‘Might even be a Permanent Secretary.’

He didn’t know how to reply to that. ‘I, er, I hardly think so,’ he said, damning himself further.

I agreed, and said that I sincerely hoped that anyone who made a howler like that could never go on to be a Permanent Secretary. He nodded, but the expression on his face 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 attention.

I’m sure he will. I look forward to seeing what he comes up with tomorrow.

November 23rd

When I arrived at the office this morning Bernard informed me that Sir Humphrey wished to see me right away.

He hurried in clutching a thin file, and looking distinctly more cheerful.

I asked him what the answer was to be.

‘Minister,’ he said, ‘I’ve been on to the Lord Chancellor’s Office, and this is what we normally say in circumstances like this.’

He handed me the file. Inside was a sheet of paper which read as follows:

‘This file contains the complete set of available papers except for:

(a) a small number of secret documents

(b) a few documents which are part of still active files

(c) some correspondence lost in the floods of 1967

(d) some records which went astray in the move to London

(e) other records which went astray when the War Office was incorporated into the Ministry of Defence

(f) the normal withdrawal of papers whose publication could give grounds for an action for libel or breach of confidence or cause embarrassment to friendly governments.’

[1967 was, in one sense, a very bad winter. From the Civil Service point of view it was a very good one. All sorts of embarrassing records were lost — Ed.]

I read this excellent list. Then I looked in the file. There were no papers there at all! Completely empty.

‘Is this how many are left? None?’

‘Yes Minister.’