No sooner do you kill off one regulation - after the latest 'cull' you can now buy methylated spirits on a Sunday (though not much else has changed) – than more appear.

Now advertisements have gone up across the UK alerting all chiropodists, dietitians, occupational therapists, paramedics and speech therapists that they have to be registered with the Health Professions Council, under pain of a £5000 fine.

This regulator was set up under the 2001 Health Professions Order (that's the kind of thing that just goes through Parliament on the nod with lots of other junk), though I've not seen anything from them before, so I guess it's taken them four years to get going. But they list 60 staff on their website, so it's not exactly an inexpensive quango.

No doubt all qualified medical personnel, like arts therapists (yes, that's another one) and orthotists all welcome this measure, despite the paperwork it involves. After all, it ensures patients are cared for by qualified staff (assuming they bother to check the register).

Well, it might. What professional regulation certainly does, as Milton Friedman and Simon Kuznets explained in their book, Income from Independent Professional Practice, is to keep out the competition and raise fees.