The Sketch: Tories have a field day as Labour cleans out its stables

Yesterday was an opportunity for ministers to sweep up the mess left by their predecessors. No, not Conservative predecessors, but ministers in the Labour government, since 1997, from whom they had inherited their jobs. So both Alistair Darling at Transport and Andrew Smith at Work and Pensions decided that it was time to clean out the Augean stables in their respective departments.

The hardest task, since his statement followed Transport questions, fell to Mr Smith, who was obliged to 'fess up to the mistakes under his predecessor – none other than Mr Darling. But, in fairness to both, the mistakes in these departments were ultimately out of their control as Gordon Brown had in effect dictated their every move.

They are his stooges, both having served as his Chief Secretary as well as being party to his £5bn annual raid on the pension funds. They both have "speak your weight" styles of delivery, although Mr Darling has a volume control not fitted to Mr Smith. Mr Brown felt it necessary to police Mr Smith on the front bench as he made his statement – which amounted to absolutely nothing. Except that Mr Smith's method of saying absolutely nothing is to say it at length by dressing it up as "the voluntarist approach working to maximum effect". And there was certainly no biting of bullets, such as the widely forecast suggestion that the pension age may be raised.

Mr Smith has a booming voice – and that is when he talks quietly. Much of the time he simply shouted and ranted, turning puce in the process. "People living longer is good news," he intoned. Of course this is actually dreadful news for his department. The statement was about "simplification". So why then, to "simplify", was it necessary to create a "proactive pensions regulator" and establish an "independent pensions commission"? Mr Smith's statement was full of contradictions. Since 1997, we were told that the Government had taken action to rebuild trust in the financial services industry. Which made it hard to reconcile the need for the new proactive pensions regulator "to focus on schemes where there is a high risk of fraud, bad governance or maladministration".

Mr Darling told us that there was more congestion on our roads than we thought. The Government has underestimated the congestion, and this congestion is caused by "more traffic in 2000 than had been thought". Apparently there had been a Soviet-style "10-year plan", announced a couple of years ago, to reduce congestion. No one, apart from ministers, believed it. And no one expected it to make any difference, except for the worse. Even Mr Darling seems ready to acknowledge that government policy will have no impact on alleviating congestion.

This should have been a field day for the Tories, and it was. David Willetts' and Tim Collins' barks and bites actually left marks – which goes to prove that there is still life left in the old Tory dog.