S02E02 Doing the Honours

We can't any economise in accommodation? (WOMAN) 'Fraid not, Minister.

- Data-processing equipment? - Not possible.

- The further education budget? - Sadly, it can't be.

At least the universities won't cost us as much, with overseas students paying fees which cover full of the cost of their education.

- Unless you make exceptions which will be opposed? - No, I'm sorry, no exceptions.

At least, that's one saving that we can hang on to.

- Minister, it's - Yes, of course.

That's all, I'm afraid.

Meeting over.

- Thank you - Thank you.

Oh minister, before Sir Humphrey comes, the honour secretary in Number 10 was asking whether you will approve the departmental recommendations for the honours list.

That's the eighth time you've asked.

Are honours really the most serious concern of the entire department? They are to the people on the list, Minister.

They are never off the phone. Some of them don't seem to aslept for 3 nights! What are they worried about anyway? Ministers never veto civil servant honours, do they?

Oh hardly but it is theoretically possible and they're all getting worried about the delay.

How do people know they're on the list anyway? The file is marked "Strictly Confidential".

Oh, Minister?

Silly of me.

If they'd put quarter of that effort into cutting expenditure How on Earth can I make people want economies in the same way they want OBEs and KCBs? I've been thinking No, no, no.

- What? - No, no, nothing.

-Come on Bernard spit it out.

It's not my place, and I wouldn't suggest this and I couldn't possibly recommend it. But just suppose you were to refuse to recommend any honours for civil servants who hadn't cut their budgets by 5%? - Bernard! - I'm sorry, Minister No, Bernard! It's brilliant! It's the answer.

It's the only hold we have over the civil servants.

I can't stop their pay rises and I can't prevent their promotions.

I don't even write their reports, but I can withhold their honours! - Well done, Bernard.

- You thought of it, Minister.

- No, no, you thought of it.

- No, you thought of it.

Please! Just a touch, please.

Thank you very much.

Splendid dinner, Master

I always enjoy my visits here.

I'm afraid this could be your last.

Why? Did I pass the port the wrong way? - Tell him, Bursar.

- Baillie college's going to the wall.

It's your government's new policy of charging overseas students full economic rates for that tuition.

Other Oxford colleges can cope, but we've always had an exceptional number of overseas students here at Baillie.

You simply charge them a full fee, no problem.

Unless they can't pay ￡4,000 a year.

They simply won't come.

I've been everywhere all over the USA, raising funds, selling them the idea of an Oxford education.

Africa is crawling with British professors frantically trying to flog sociology courses to the natives.

And India and the Middle East.

Competition is cut-throat.

Why don't you fill up vacancies with British undergraduates? I don't think that's awfully funny, Humphrey.

- I wasn't trying to be funny.

- Anything but home students! - Why? - We only get 500 a head for UK students.

We'd have to take 400 to replace a mere 50 foreigners.

The staff/student ratio would go from 1:10 to 1:34.

We'd have classrooms, dormitories. It would be like Wormwood Scrubs! Or the University of Sussex! The Master thinks the pictures may fetch ￡20-30,000.

The pictures and silver together might just pay the mortgage interest on the new buildings.

Dear, oh, dear! Or we could get the Government to treat us as an exception.

Interestingly, Humphrey, it seems to be your Minister who has the authority.

How might one setted by persuading a Minister of the importance of Baillie College? Oh I don't know. Why not get him down to a High Table dinner? Is he of the intellectual calibre to understand our case? Oh, yes! For sure our case is intelligible to anyone with the intellectual calibre of Winnie the Pooh! Quite! And Hacker is of the intellectual calibre of Winnie the Pooh? Oh, yes! On his day.

- Morning, Minister.

- Morning, Humphrey.

Two things, Minister.

Firstly, the departmental recommendations for the honours list.

- The honours list again! - Yes, Minister.

- I think we'll leave that for the moment, Humphrey shall we?

- I think we can't leave it, Minister.

- It's getting dangerous to near the five weeks.

- Five weeks? All recipients are notified at least five weeks before propagation

and gives them time to refuse, you know.

When did a civil servant last refuse an honour?! Somebody in the Treasury refused a knighthood.

- When? - I think it was 1496.

- Why? - He'd already got one.

- Well minister if you've approved the list - Humphrey did you know that 20% of honours go to civil servants? A fitting tribute to their devotion to duty.

That's what they get paid for.

The rest of the population has to do something to get an honour, something special.

They work for years with the mentally handicapped children 6 nights a week to get an MBE.

Your knighthoods simply come up with the rations.

Minister, her Majesty's civil servants spend their lives working for a modest wage and at the end retire into obscurity.

Honours are a small reward for a lifetime of loyal, self-effacing discretion and devoted service to her majesty and to the nation.

- "A modest wage" did you say? - Alas, yes.

Humphrey you get over ￡30,000 a year! - That's ￡7,000 more than I get.

- But still relatively modest.

Relative to whom? Elizabeth Taylor, for example.

You are not relative to Elizabeth Taylor.

There are important differences.

Indeed, yes.

She didn't get a first at Oxford.

You do not retire into obscurity, you take a massive pension and become directors of oil companies and banks

But very obscure directors.

You're in no danger of the sack.

In industry, if you screw things up, you get the boot.

In the civil service, if you screw up, I get the boot! - Very droll, Minister.

Now if you have approved the list - No, Humphrey.

I'll not approve any honour to any civil servant in this department who hasn't earned it.

- What do you mean, "earned it"? - I mean "earned it".

- Done something to deserve it.

- But that's unheard of! My new policy is to withhold all honours from civil servants in this department who do not make a cut in their budgets of 5% per year.

May I take it, your silence indicates approval? You may not! Where did you get that preposterous idea? It just came to me.

- It's ridiculous! Unheard of! It asks the question. -Why? -The whole idea is It's It strikes at the very roots of It's the beginning of the end! The thin end of the wedge! A Bennite solution! Where will it end? Abolition of the monarchy? Don't be absurd.

There is no reason to change a system that has worked so well in the past.

It hasn't.

- We've got to give the (?) a fair trial.

- I thought you might say that The Most Noble Order of the Garter was founded in 1348 by King Edward III.

I think it has come towards its end of its trial period now.

Minister, if you block honours pending economies, you might create a dangerous precedent.

You mean if we do the right thing this time, we might have to do the right thing again next time? - Nothing would get done at all! - On the contrary.

- Many many things must be done, but nothing must be done for the first time! No, Minister! What I mean is I'm fully seized of your aims, and of course I'll do my utmost to see them put into practice.

To that end, I recommend that we set up a interdepartmental committee with very broad terms of reference, so that at the end of the day we're in a position to think through the various implications and arrive to the decisions based on long-term considerations rather than rush prematurely into precipitate and possibly ill-conceived actions which might well have unforeseen repercussions.

You mean "no"? I mean, as far as one can see, in the fullness of time No, no, no, Humphrey.

You know me: Action now! (MUTTERS) Action now.

Nobody in their right mind can want honours.

They encourage sycophancy, snobbery, jealousy, and it is not fair civil servants should get all! - But Minister - No, no! I'm sorry.

I have decided.

- What was your other point? - Other point? - You had two.

- Did I? Yes, I'm sorry.

The shock! Minister, yesterday, I had representations from Baillie College, Oxford.

The new ruling about grants for overseas students. Baillie has to lose millions a year.

They must just take more British students.

I'm sure nothing would please them more, minister, but you see Baillie has easily the highest proportion of foreign students, and there could be very serious repercussions at the schools of tropical medicine, and international law, and the Arabic department may have to close down completely.

We can't educate foreigners at the taxpayer's expense.

Not just foreigners.

If the diplomatic service had nowhere to immerse its recruits in, ()culture for example, the results could be catastrophic, with a pro-Israeli Foreign Office! What would happen to our oil policy then? You just have to immerse its recruits elsewhere.

Where else would they learn Arabic? Arabia? Actually, Baillie College does have an outstanding record.

- It's filled the jails of the British empire for years.

- Jails? Yes.

The letters "JB" are the outstanding honour in the Commonwealth.

- "JB"? - "Jailed by the British".

Gandhi, Nkrumah, Makarios, Ben-Gurion, Kenyatta, Nehru, Mugabe.

The list of world leaders is endless and contains several of our students.

"Our students"? Humphrey, which college did you go to? Minister, that is quite beside the point.

I like being beside the point.

Humour me, Humphrey.

Which college did you go to? Was it Baillie, by any strange coincidence? It so happens that I am a Baillie man, but that has nothing to do with it! No, of course not.

Perish the thought.

Naughty.

Yes? The division, Minister.

That rather settles it, doesn't it, Humphrey?

No more time.

Oh, Bernard, which one suppose I'll be voting "aye" or "no"? - "No".

It's the opposition of armament, it's the second reading - I don't want to know what it is.

I don't want to go through the wrong door.

(KNOCK AT DOOR) Arnold? Humphrey! Do sit down.

I hope you don't mind my dragging will be here to the cabinet office.

- No, please.

- I was worried about your Minister.

Linking honours to economies.

That? A lot of nonsense.

Good.

You mean it's not true? Not exactly.

That is, he did just mention it.

- But - But what? I can't find any effective arguments against it.

- Humphrey, it's the thin end of the wedge.

- That's what I said.

- A Bennite solution.

- I said that.

- Where will it end? - That's what I said.

No, it's intolerable, but irresistible.

I'm not reprimanding you, I don't know the facts well enough.

But as the head of the service I'd like your assurance that he won't be putting it into practice.

I certainly hope he won't.

I'm not sure that hope is quite good enough.

Suppose he did apply it to your department, the contagion would spread throughout the government! Every department! - Presumably, we can count on you? - I shall certainly try.

- But it's rather tricky.

- I'm sure you know what you're doing.

But this could cause people to reflect on your soundness.

Of course I have no doubts about you myself, but - Anyway I thought it might be useful to have a little chat.

- Absolutely, Arnold.

Thank you.

By the way, I had our old college master on the phone.

- He said you dined at Baillie last week.

- That's right! I told them that I was sure to get your Minister to treat them as a special case. I hope I was right.

Yes Yes I've got the Minister coming to a benefactors' dinner.

Good.

Sound man.

Well, I must be getting over to Number 10.

Thanks for dropping in.

Pleasure Arnold.

I gather Sir Humphrey saw the Cabinet Secretary yesterday and got the most frightful wigging.

Really? Yes, really tore him off a strip because of your brilliant scheme linking economies to honours.

- Your scheme.

- I think we've been through all that before.

Sorry.

My scheme.

Why does the cabinet secretary give a wigging to someone as high up as Humphrey? Normally, it's civilised, but this time it was no-holds-barred.

Sir Arnold told Sir Humphrey he wasn't actually reprimanding him.

- Bad as that, was it? - Yes.

He suggested some people might not think Sir Humphrey was sound.

- A real punch-up! - Yes indeed.

What has Sir Arnold to fear anyway? He has all the honours he could want.

- He has his "G".

- "G"? - You get your "G" after your "K".

- You speak in riddles, Bernard.

First you get the CMG, then the KCMG and the GCMG, the Command of the Order of St Michael and St George, Knight Command of St Michael and St George, Knight Grand Cross of St Michael and St George.

In the service, CMG stands for "Call Me God".

And KCMG for "Kindly Call Me God".

What does GCMG stand for? "God Calls Me God".

Why should Sir Arnold worry? He has his full quota of honours, hasn't he.

Nowhere near! There's a peerage, the CH, the OM, the Order of the Garter, the Knight of the Thistle… Knight of the Thistle? Who for? - Scotsmen and donkeys?! - There's a distinction.

You haven't met the Scottish Nationalists! - How do they award the Thistle? - A committee sits on it.

Does Humphrey really think that I should change government policy on university finance on the strict of the dinner of the High Table? I believe Baillie College give a very good dinner, Minister.

- How much further? - A few minutes.

The M40 is a very good road.

So's the M4 Why did we get two really good roads to Oxford before any to Southampton or Dover or() or any of the ports? Nearly all our Permanent Secretaries went to Oxford, Minister, and most Oxford colleges give very good dinners.

- The Cabinet let them get away with it? - Certainly not, they put their foot down.

They said no motorway to take civil servants to dinners in Oxford, unless there was a motorway to take Ministers hunting in the shires.

That's why the M1 was built in the 50's and stopped in the middle of Leicestershire! Oh, come! So what about the M11, just completed? Doesn't Cambridge give as good dinners as Oxfords? Yes, of course, Minister, but it's been years and years since Transport had a Permanent Secretary from Cambridge.

(CHATTER) For a college on the edge of bankruptcy, it wasn't a bad at all dinner! The Fitzwalter Dinner is paid for by a specific endowment, a great 16th-century benefactor.

Most nights who finds it eating Mother's Pride and processed cheese.

What do you need is a 20th-century benefactor.

- How interesting you should say that.

- Why? Benefactors are few and far between.

Isaac Wolfson is only the second man in the history to have a college named after him - at Oxford and Cambridge.

- Who's the first? Jesus.

- Jesus? - Jesus Christ.

Some of our most revered benefactors are men who saved the college from the depredations of the Government.

Their names are remembered and hallowed for centuries.

- It's a sort of immortality.

- Really? What did these benefactors do? Take Sir William de Vere, his coat of arms are there and his name's on the?()?chapel.

He diverted the baronial army away from Baillie in the 15th century.

He had the soldiers billetted at St George's College.

- I didn't know there was a St George's.

- There isn't.

Not since then.

Then, there's George Monkton, whom Monkton Quad's named after.

He stopped Cromwell having all the college silver melted down to pay for his model army.

He told them the silver was better quality at Trinity, Cambridge! Now, it looks like there'll be no college left to remember.

Unless of course we can solve the problem of overseas students.

(MURMURS OF AGREEMENT) Well, of course, one would like to help oneself.

Er help one's friends.

Help the college.

- Nothing to do with the honour.

- Of course not! Ignoble thought.

The Minister believes it's a politician's duty to help others.

(SLURRING) Absolutely.

Name of the game.

That's why we go into politics, to help others.

I'm an idealist ,really , nothing to do with the honour.

Most of the honour comes after you're dead.

Not much satisfaction from having your name on the silver sconce when you're six feet under! Incidentally, Master, to change the subject completely, when do you award your honorary doctorates? The actual ceremony's not for a few months, but we have to make a final decision in just two weeks.

- Doctorate? - Aren't they decided? There is one Doctorate of Law still to be decided.

We're wondering whether it should go to a judge or someone in Government.

(SLURS) Judge?! You don't want to make a judge a Doctor of Law! The politicians make the laws and pass the laws.

If it wasn't for politicians, the judges wouldn't be able to judge.

There'd be no laws to judge! - Yes, indeed.

- Quite! They'd have nothing to do.

Queues of unemployed judges in silly wigs! It's all right for judges.

They don't have to suck up to TV producers, lie to journalists.

They don't have to pretend to like their Cabinet colleagues.

Do you know something else? Well I tell you. If judges had to put up with some of my cabinet colleagues, they'd bring capital punishment back tomorrow! Bloody good job, too! I'll tell you another thing: I can't send him to prison.

Can't send him to prison.

If I were a judge, I could whiz old Humpy off to the Scrubs.

Feet wouldn't touch.

Clang bang! See you in three years.

One third remission for good conduct.

I can't do that! I have to listen to him.

Oh, God! On and on and on! Some of his sentences are longer than Judge Jeffreys'! No, no, no.

Politicians are much more deserving.

You don't want to give your doctory honourates to judges.

Definitely not! Beautifully argued, Minister.

I see now we shouldn't give it to a judge.

- You put the case most expertly.

- Almost like a Doctor of Law.

In fact, I can see you there now in the Sheldonian, standing there in those magnificent crimson robes, receiving your doctorate in front of an assembly of eminent scholars.

(HUMPHREY) Wonderful.

(MASTER) Marvellous.

How funny you should say that.

I was just thinking the same thing.

Morning, Minister.

Morning, Bernard.

Most enjoyable dinner last night, Minister.

I wonder if we could have a private chat.

Would you forgive us, Bernard.

The master of Baillie has asked me to sound you out whether you'd be interested in? accepting an honorary doctorate of law in the University.

Me? Good heavens! - It's not an offer.

- No, of course not.

Of course, in view of your well-known hostility to honours…

Don't be silly, Humphery, This is quite different.

Not entirely, Minister.

It's a matter of accepting a doctrine without doing anything to deserve it, as you might put it in your refreshingly blunt fashion.

I'm a Cabinet Minister! - Isn't that what you're paid for? - Yes, but No! Yes, but I can't refuse a vote of confidence in the Government, not just oneself.

No, quite.

As I say, it's not certain, it's (HUMPHREY HUMS TO HIMSELF)?

Humphrey, to change the subject completely, I'd like to do what I can for the Baillie College in this overseas students business.

Oh, good! But wouldn't I need a pretext a reason? No, Minister, no problem there.

The Palace has been under pressure from certain African Commonwealth leaders.

We can't embarrass the Palace, so we'll redesignate Baillie as a Commonwealth Education Centre.

But where am I to find the money? I'm set on 5% cuts across the board.

Because if that's achieved, anything's possible.

- The expenditure survey committee are waiting.

- Very well, show them in.

Well Minister, I suppose we could achieve the cuts in this department, if the absurd idea of linking honours to cuts were to be shelved.

- I see.

- Yes (HUMPHREY) Thank you, Bernard.

(HACKER) Morning.

Now, minutes of the previous meeting? Matters arising: Accommodation.

Oh, yes! I'm happy to be able to tell you that we have found a 5% cut, by selling an old office in High Wycombe.

- Oh, really? - Yes.

- Yes, very good.

- Yes.

Stationery acquisition? We've discovered a new stock control system will reduce expenditure.

- By how much? - About 5%, wasn't it? Excellent! Parks and Forestry Administration? If we delay the new computers, we can make a saving.

- By how much? - Yes? - About 5%.

- Yes, about 5%.

- Really? - That cuts data processing, too.

- By? - By By about 5%.

- Really? Humphrey, this is most satisfying.

- Yes.

Incidentally, while I think of it, have you finished with the list of the departmental recommendations for the honours secretary? Yes, Humphrey.

No problem there.

Bernard will give it to you.

- Thank you, Bernard.

- All right, Humphrey? Yes, Doctor er, Minister.

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