The Complete Yes Minister (61 page)

‘Minister,’ I said, ‘you’re wanted in the Communications Room. The VAT man.’ He looked blank. ‘About your ’69 returns.’ He must have had a great deal too much already for he just stared at me as if I was mad, until I was forced to say, ‘Vat 69’.

‘Ah. Ah. Yes,’ he said, turned gleefully, bumped into a hovering prince, and spilt what was left of his previous drink.

‘Bernard,’ Sir Humphrey took me by the arm and led me quickly to one side. ‘I’m beginning to think that the Minister’s had almost as many urgent messages as he can take.’

I was glad he’d led me to a quiet corner. I immediately blurted out that I had just found out the most terrible thing: that the contract was obtained by bribery.

Sir Humphrey, to my intense surprise, was completely unconcerned. Not only that, he
knew
. He told me that all contracts in Qumran were obtained by bribery. ‘Everybody knows that. It’s perfectly all right as long as nobody knows.’

I was pretty sure that the Minister didn’t know. I suggested telling him.

‘Certainly not,’ Sir Humphrey admonished me.

‘But if everybody knows . . .’

‘Everybody else,’ he said firmly. ‘You do not necessarily let Ministers know what everybody else knows.’

At the crucial moment in the discussion two people converged upon us. From our right, His Royal Highness, Prince Feisal. And from our left, the Minister, looking distinctly the worse for wear.

‘Ah, Lawrence of Arabia,’ cried Hacker as he lurched towards Sir Humphrey. ‘There’s a message for you in the communications room.’

‘Oh?’ said Sir Humphrey, ‘who is it this time?’

‘Napoleon,’ announced the Minister, giggled, then fell to the floor.

[
Hacker’s diary continues – Ed
.]

Back in England, and back at the office. Feel rather jet-lagged. I often wonder if we statesmen really are capable of making the wisest decisions for our countries in the immediate aftermath of foreign travel.

Today there was a most unfortunate story in the
Financial Times
, reporting a story from the French press.

I showed it to Bernard. A lot of use that was!

‘Webs don’t form blots, Minister,’ was his comment.

‘What?’ I said.

‘Spiders don’t have ink, you see. Only cuttlefish.’ Sometimes I think that Bernard is completely off his head. Spiders don’t have cuttlefish. I couldn’t see what he meant at all. Sometimes I wonder if he says these idiotic things so that he can avoid answering my questions. [
Another sign of Hacker’s growing awareness – Ed
.]

So I asked him, directly, what he thought about publishing a baseless accusation of this kind against British Electronic Systems.

He muttered that it was terrible, and agreed with me that the squalid world of baksheesh and palm-greasing is completely foreign to our nature. ‘After all, we
are
British,’ I remarked.

He agreed without hesitation that we are British.

But there was something shifty in his manner. So I didn’t let it drop. ‘And yet,’ I said, ‘it’s not like the
FT
to print this sort of thing unless there’s something behind it.’

And I looked at him and waited. Bernard seemed to me to be affecting an air of studious unconcern.

‘There isn’t anything behind it, is there Bernard?’

He got to his feet, and looked at the newspaper. ‘I think the sports news is behind it, Minister.’

Clearly there
is
something behind it, and clearly Bernard has been told to keep his mouth shut. Tomorrow I have a meeting with Humphrey first thing in the morning. And I intend to get to the bottom of this matter.

My meeting with Humphrey.

I began by showing him the article in the
FT
. Though I think Bernard must have drawn his attention to it already.

I told him that I wanted to know the truth.

‘I don’t think you do, Minister.’

‘Will you answer a direct question, Humphrey?’

He hesitated momentarily. ‘Minister, I strongly advise you not to ask a direct question.’

‘Why?’

‘It might provoke a direct answer.’

‘It never has yet.’

It was clear to me yesterday that Bernard knows something about all this. I don’t think he was levelling with me. So today I put him on the spot, in front of Humphrey, so that he couldn’t say one thing to his Minister and another to his Permanent Secretary. [
This brilliant move by Hacker struck at the heart of the entire Private Secretary system – Ed
.]

‘Bernard, on your word of honour, do you know anything about this?’

He stared at me like a frightened rabbit. His eyes flickered briefly at Sir Humphrey who – like me – was gazing at him in the hope (but without the confidence) that he would say the appropriate thing.

Bernard clearly didn’t know how to reply, proof enough that he knew something fishy had been going on.

‘Well, I, er, that is, there was, er, someone did . . .’

Humphrey interrupted hastily. ‘There was a lot of gossip, that’s all. Rumour. Hearsay.’

I ignored Humphrey. ‘Come on Bernard.’

‘Um . . . well, one of the Qumranis did tell me he had received, er, been paid . . .’

‘Hearsay, Minister,’ cried Humphrey indignantly.

I indicated Bernard. ‘Hearsay?’

‘Yes,’ Humphrey was emphatic. ‘Bernard heard him say it.’

Clearly I was going to get nothing further out of Bernard. But he’d told me all I needed to know.

‘Humphrey. Are you telling me that BES got the contract through bribery?’

He looked pained. ‘I wish you wouldn’t use words like “bribery”, Minister.’

I asked if he’d prefer that I use words like slush fund, sweeteners, or brown envelopes. He patronisingly informed me that these are, in his view, extremely crude and unworthy expressions for what is no more than creative negotiation. ‘It is the general practice,’ he asserted.

I asked him if he realised just what he was saying. After all, I ratified this contract myself, in good faith. ‘And in that communiqué I announced to the press a British success in a fair fight.’

‘Yes,’ he mused, ‘I did wonder about that bit.’

‘And now,’ I fumed, ‘you are telling me we got it by bribery?’

‘No, Minister,’ he replied firmly.

There seemed to be a light at the end of the tunnel. My spirits lifted. ‘Ah,’ I said, ‘we
didn’t
get it by bribery.’

‘That’s not what I said,’ he said carefully.

‘Well what
did
you say?’

‘I said I am not telling you we got it by bribery.’

Pure sophistry if ever I heard any. It seemed there was no light at the end of the tunnel after all. Or if there was, it was turning out to be the proverbial oncoming train. So I asked him how he described the payments that had been made.

‘You mean, how does the contract describe them?’ he asked, to make it clear that he would never describe them at all, under any circumstances.

To cut a long story short, Bernard gave me a list of informal guidelines for making these payments, a list that is in highly confidential circulation among top multinational companies.

To me the scale of corruption was even more appalling than the fact that it was going on. [
A typical Hacker response. Clearly, corruption was perfectly acceptable to Hacker in smallish amounts. As subsequently became clear in the affair of the rosewater jar – Ed
.]

I asked how the payments were generally made.

‘Anything from a numbered account in the Swiss Bank to a fistful of used oncers slipped under the door of the gents.’

He was so casual about it. He couldn’t see how shocking it was. He
said
he couldn’t, anyway.

I spluttered almost incoherently about bribery and corruption being sin. And a criminal offence.

‘Minister.’ He gave me a patient smile. ‘That is a narrow parochial view. In other parts of the world they see it quite differently.’

‘Humphrey! Sin is not a branch of geography!’

But he argued that sin
is
a branch of geography, that in developing countries the size of the ‘extra-contractual payment’ is the means of showing how serious you are about the deal. When a multinational makes a big ‘political contribution’ it simply demonstrates that it expects big profits.

[
It is like a publisher’s advance to an author. The one who pays the biggest advance is the one who is going for the biggest sales – Ed
.]

‘You’re telling me,’ I asked, ‘that winking at corruption is government policy?’

‘Oh no Minister! That would be unthinkable. It could never be government policy. Only government practice.’

His double standards leave me quite breathless.

In the middle of this unprecedented discussion [
Not so – Ed
.] the press office rang. They wanted a statement about the Qumran bribery allegation. I had no idea what to say to them. I asked Humphrey for his help.

‘I’m sure the press office can draft something convincing and meaningless,’ he said obligingly. ‘That’s what they’re paid for, after all.’

I told him he was an appalling cynic. He took that as a compliment, remarking that a cynic is only a term used by an idealist to describe a realist.

I realised from his remark about the press office that he expected me to help with some cover-up if necessary. A shocking suggestion. Or implication, to be precise, since he hadn’t exactly suggested it. And then, I also realised I had an alternative.

‘I’ll tell the truth,’ I said abruptly.

‘Minister! What are you thinking of!’

‘I knew nothing of this. Why should I defend what I never approved?’

Then he trotted out all the usual stuff. That the contract is worth thousands of British jobs, and millions of export dollars, and that we can’t throw all that away for some small technical irregularity.

I explained, again, that it is not a small technical irregularity, but corruption!

‘No Minister, just a few uncontracted prepayments . . .’

I had heard enough. I was forced to explain to him that government is not just a matter of fixing and manipulating. There is a moral dimension.

‘Of course, Minister. A moral dimension. I assure you it is never out of my thoughts.’

‘So,’ I went on, ‘if this question comes up in the House, or if the papers start asking questions, I shall announce an inquiry.’

‘Excellent idea,’ he agreed. ‘I shall be more than happy to conduct it.’

I took a deep breath. ‘No Humphrey. Not an internal inquiry. A real inquiry.’

His eyes widened in horror. ‘Minister! You can’t be serious!’

‘A real inquiry!’ I repeated emphatically.

‘No, no, I beg you!’

‘The moral dimension.’ It really is time moral issues were made central to our government once again. And I’m the man to do it.

SIR BERNARD WOOLLEY RECALLS:
⁴

It was shortly after the day that Hacker threatened a real inquiry into the Qumran deal that I went to Hacker’s London flat to collect him
en route
for an official visit to the Vehicle Licensing Centre in Swansea. Some morale-boosting was urgently called for down there, because the installation of the labour-saving computers had caused such delays that thousands more staff had been taken on to sort out the chaos. It looked as though larger computers would now be necessary, at some considerable public expense, partly in order to handle the situation and partly in order to avoid our having to lay off all the extra employees now working there. As job-creation was central to our strategy in the depressed or Special Development Areas [
i.e. Marginal Constituencies – Ed
.] it was important to find something for these chaps to do. Clearly Hacker was not able to make any useful contribution in that area, but Sir Humphrey felt that a goodwill visit from the Minister would keep things friendlier for the time being and would make it look as though something was being done while we all racked our brains and tried to think what!