Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, recently produced a progress report into his ‘bonfire of the quangos.

According to the open-shirted axeman, changes already made under the Public Bodies Reform Act are on track to save £2.6bn by 2015. Even those spared the current onslaught on the quangocracy – which has seen 106 of Whitehall's arm's length bodies axed and the merger of 150 into fewer than 70 – will be subject to continual reviews.