If anybody does not now realise that Britain is hugely, perhaps chronically, indebted then they must be living on ex-planet Pluto. ‘Our’ mountain of debt and it is ours and the cost of servicing it is going to weigh heavily upon the economy for many years, much more so after the next general election. No matter which party is in No 10, the management of national debt is going to be a key factor influencing fiscal and budgetary policy (and VAT will probably rise and be extended as part of this process).

Within this leveraged context, to use the credit jargon, policy makers will perhaps start to ask more searching questions of their public offices and servants something that should always be undertaken, but the mushrooming of the public sector in recent years suggests has been ignored.

So, what value does the British taxpayer, the British citizen and the British food industry (retail, manufacturing and production) receive from its competition regulator?

Three Competition Commission reports have confirmed that a transparently competitive industry is “competitive”. Without wishing to sound flippant, a GCSE project could probably have come up with the same conclusion in the absence of isochronic analysis. Post these reports, the retail industry now has an extensive process of announcements, consultations, considerations, appeals and confirmations for every store transacted between the respective players. What does this cost? Furthermore, is it of any benefit to anybody? (I dread asking because it could introduce a debate on wholly new unfathomable metrics to justify the basis of cost-benefit analysis in food retail competition.) And does anybody care?

Well, some folk may just start to when the next government is in power, because a growing consensus is that it will not just be taxes that rise but public sector budgets that are reappraised.

At any time it is dangerous and unhealthy when bureaucracy becomes self-perpetuating, serving itself and not the citizen or taxpayer. At times the bureaucracy of competition policy has been a potent mix of Frank Carson meets Franz Kafka meets Joseph Heller. Maybe it is time we asked: does anyone care now much food industry regulation costs and does it deliver any benefit, never mind an acceptable cost-benefit equation?

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