Official Briefings for Incoming Ministers should be worth reading.  For a start, they should brief the new Minister about current issues and priorities. And they should be brief.

So if you want to quickly get yourself up to speed on a policy area, you could do worse than start with the latest published BIM.  Right?

Err, not exactly. Don’t forget the power of redaction.

Take the case of the Treasury’s December 2016 briefing for Paul Goldsmith, the Minister for Regulatory Reform.  Now regulatory reform is a far-reaching and complex issue.

You might be encouraged to be told that this BIM is 48 pages long. Think again. Every page beyond page seven is blank. Speed readers gain no advantage.

In each case the redaction is to protect the person supplying the information, or its subject, or to protect the confidentiality of advice. Who said the public sector is too risk averse? Even the page numbers are redacted.

So what did the BIM say about the issues up to page seven?

It reiterated the Productivity Commission’s 2014 finding that two-thirds of regulatory chief executives said they had to work with legislation that was out-dated or not-fit-for purpose. Indeed, look no further than the RMA for an example.

It summarised the government’s July 2015 response as acknowledging the need to do more to improve and update the stock of regulation and announcing a “comprehensive work programme to take forward the opportunities identified by the Commission”. Good, good, good. What bureaucracy would oppose a funded comprehensive work programme?

Our view of the importance the BIM attaches to improving the stock of regulation is that it

Our best assessment of the likely outcome from the comprehensive work programme is:

If you want to know more, the Treasury can surely help - with the page numbers at least.