Very few major policies to emerge from the coalition government do ‘exactly what it says on the tin’, and the consultation on reform of the UK’s competition regime, published last week, is no exception.

In this case, ministers have given the consultation a thoroughly ‘pro-business’ headline. And it’s true that there is much in the paper with which the CBI finds favour, including stricter timescales for investigations.

But proposals that are pro-consumer, pro-government and pro-regulator also have a dramatic and unexpected presence in this consultation.

The aim of creating more ‘case law’ – for which read prosecutions, investigations and fines – and mandatory notification for clearance of mergers all fall into this category.

This is part of a rapid-fire approach to law reform that is coming to characterise this government. One might have expected a coalition government to change the law less, concentrating on areas of consensus only.

Yet this administration prefers to allow many of each party’s pet policies free rein, even when they pull overall policy in different directions.

In this atmosphere, lawyers bear a special responsibility to scrutinise reforms.

While public policy has some tolerance for internal contradictions, the rival perspectives contained in the competition review are so divergent that achieving the synthesis that both businesses and regulators will welcome is too delicate a job to be left to ministers and civil servants.