Yes Minister (of State for Energy Security and Net Zero)

‘Good Morning Sir Humphrey.’

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‘Good morning Bernard.’

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‘How was the meeting at the Ministry of Defence about the military nuclear waste stored at Dounreay?'

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‘We never got to talk about it. The department is in total chaos. The Permanent Secretary is going livid about Rishi’s crackpot National Service idea.’

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‘But surely that’s just election posturing?’

 

‘No Bernard. They think it is a winner. The Home Secretary thinks it will bring young people out of their bubble, although the Defence Secretary is very quiet despite his youngest two now being twenty and safe from call-up.’

 

‘But surely the military won’t be able to cope with the influx.’

 

‘Exactly Bernard. We have reduced army numbers by twenty-seven thousand since twenty-ten, so we would have very few spare soldiers to train thirty-thousand a year on National Service. In addition to help balance the Ministry of Defence books in recent years we have sold off much of what was then surplus accommodation. So we have nowhere to house them.’

 

‘So it will cost more than two point five billion pounds a year?’

 

‘Of course. The Permanent Secretary is currently trying to work out if we pay them the minimum wage and then take off food and accommodation costs, can they make the books balance from the shared prosperity fund. But given we will have to rent back from the private sector developers the accommodation we have only just sold them, it doesn’t look positive.’

 

‘I am sorry Sir Humphrey, the shared prosperity fund?’

 

‘Yes, what we saved by not paying for membership of the European Union.’

 

‘I didn't realise there was anything left, I thought we had given the whole of the three hundred and fifty million pounds a week to the NHS. Wasn’t that what was advertised on the bus?’

 

‘Bernard.’

 

‘Of course Sir Humphrey, naive of me.’

 

‘An easy mistake to make Bernard, seventeen million others also got it wrong.’