Primary care trusts were unfazed when health select committee MPs slated their financial abilities earlier this year.

Inevitably, their response was to point to that panacea for the NHS’s ills, otherwise known as world class commissioning, a hugely ambitious title especially as commissioning has a reputation for being globally dire.

But what will they make of the government’s response to the committee’s findings, published last week, advising them to take lessons in cost effectiveness from “Derek Wanless, former NatWest chief executive”?

Advice that is unlikely to be followed - being a banking boss is hardly a financial badge of honour these days, and Sir Derek is more widely known as a former Northern Rock non-executive director and the bank’s risk committee head honcho at the time of its undoing.

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