It is inevitable that a new government will bring back some old faces. David Cameron brought back Lord Heseltine in 2010 to advise on cities' growth leading to the latter's No Stone Unturned report. The new health secretary Wes Streeting has brought back Gordon Brown's former No10 health adviser Paul Corrigan to look at NHS reform, while Gordon Brown's former home secretary Jacqui Smith has become an education minister.

But if you can bring back old faces why not resurrect old policies? It's not as if governments never re-invent the wheel. Institutional memory is sorely lacking in Whitehall and Westminster so the same responses to problems are often repeated with the same dismal results. And yet some perfectly viable policies are ditched simply because a new government or even a new minister has taken charge and wants to make their own mark.