Speaking to clinical commissioning group leaders at a recent conference in London, Jeremy Hunt admitted he had made at least one about-face since taking over the role of health secretary.

It turned out that, en route to the Tottenham Court Road venue, he’d gone in the wrong door and found himself in the Trades Union Congress headquarters.

That would have made him the first Conservative cabinet minister to set foot in the building for… well, a jolly long while, Mr Hunt observed with a cheerful giggle.

His breeziness is to be commended. It’s alarmingly easy to imagine his predecessor Andrew Lansley never making it to the conference at all, having got hopelessly bogged down in a discussion with the security guards about the virtues of competition between NHS providers.