Many health policy fans noticed that details of a government review recommending the banning of packed lunches for schoolchildren were published on the same day that the Department of Health decided that actually plain packaging for tobacco products was a terrible idea.

End Game was among those confused as to what ministers were trying to tell us. That a free society is a good thing when it enables tobacco firms to make their products attractive to children, but not when it allows parents choose what their children can and cannot eat? Or that it’s OK for the claws of the nanny state to reach into every parent/child relationship but that restricting billionaires from making even more money out of killing people is a step too far?

So we were relieved to see a clinical commissioning group leader stepping into the good sense vacuum to offer a practical solution.

Steve Kell, Bassetlaw CCG chair and NHS Clinical Commissioners honcho, tweeted: “Surely the compromise position is that all packed lunches should be in plain packaging.”

That sounds fair enough to us and at least as sensible as any of the existing policies.