If this is how the government manages privatisation perhaps we should be grateful it has carried out so few. The report from parliament’s public spending watchdog into how the Ministry of Defence privatised Qinetiq, the defence technology business, shows a department out of its depth.

The focus of criticism is not Qinetiq’s flotation in 2006, but the sale of a minority stake to the Carlyle Group, a private equity firm, in 2003. The account of the sale negotiations is a tale of innocents abroad, where MoD officials needlessly surrendered control to the other side.