The Sketch: You need sat-nav, a map and a time trumpet for this lot

I love my sat-nav. But unless I know where I'm going, a map is also essential. Health questions is like that. The verbal directions are, at the very least questionable. Without extensive local knowledge you've no idea whether you're going north, south, left or right.

A Tory backbencher complained that because of Labour policy (if it is a policy) money was being diverted from his constituency to Labour ones. A Labour minister told us that the Conservative policy (if it is a policy) would have the effect of diverting even more money in the same direction.

All these observations will surely become redundant because both parties are committed to local autonomy. Which means encouraging local bodies to do unpopular things. So the Tories are attacking now what they will be defending when they form a government in 2015. If I listen carefully to my Time Trumpet, I can hear Lansley's chaotic voice fluting in from the future: "They are not cuts. They are tough decisions to provide the best possible service to the public with patient care first and foremost in mind."

Unless, that is, Gordon Brown has achieved the Tory goal of "operational independence" for the NHS. Then, the Prime Minister will be able to answer all questions on health in the way originated by Harold Macmillan: "That is not a question for me. That is a question for the Pottleford Primary Care Trust." Rediscovering forgotten ways is the essence of modernisation.

I've come to the view that it doesn't matter much that we can't understand what's going on. We feel as though we ought to know, we feel a little ashamed of our ignorance.

But the fact is no one knows entirely what's going on and it's a childish wish even to want someone who claims to know. A junior minister was in a European Scrutiny Committee filling in for a stand-in. There is, I think, some European agency being established to monitor, or advise on, or find ways of riding roughshod over, human rights.

Bill Cash, as ever, asked the most pertinent questions. Because he has devoted most of his career to this, the most important political development in our constitution, people say he is a bore. But he's at least as good as sat-nav.

He suggested that this agency (which had no authority, or was legally binding in any way) would fall under the aegis of the European Court of Justice. The minister said that the agency was based on a political document and that "the court would only decide on that which is legal, not that which is political."

Without understanding anything about it, I predict the agency will be established forthwith, despite what the European Scrutiny Committee (let alone Parliament) thinks, and that by the invisible process of bureaucratic brilliance it will acquire the full range of powers in due course.

sketch@simoncarr.co.uk