I thought that 1 April had come early, and we were being treated to a spoof White Paper. Among the clichéd gems that I made a note of are "vision of public service" and "new direction for change".

When the Secretary of State moves on from the "PlayStation Government" that he is offering us now, will he explain how he squares his claims about deregulation, which he repeated today for the umpteenth time, with the plethora of regulations that the Government have showered on the education and health services and on business since the day they came to office? Until he can explain that satisfactorily to the hapless recipients of the bureaucracy and the regulations, no one will believe a word that has been spoken this afternoon.