Lord Stoppit, the Minister for Stressful Happenings, described his department’s performance last year as “an unqualified success” based on the analysis of a newspaper database.

The phrase “must never be allowed to happen again” had, he announced, appeared in the national press only 18 times in 2017 while “must never happen again” totalled 28 occurrences.

Both these figures, Lord Stoppit said, were significantly down on 2016 which, he said, “showed the commitment and success of this government in reducing the number of undesirable happenings in this country”.

That claim, however, was challenged by a spokesman for MoPH, who said that if the figures are analysed in greater detail, they showed precisely the reverse.

“The important statistic is the difference between the number of things that happen and the number that are allowed to happen,” they say in their report.

“We cannot stop all happenings from happening. It is in the very nature of happenings that they should happen but we can hope to reduce the number by disallowing those that seem to us to be most heinous.

The Department of Stressful Happenings is failing in its duty if it thinks it can get away with saying that only 18 things must never be allowed to happen again when 28 things have happened that must never happen again. How can we hope to stop them from happening again if we allow them to happen?

“In 2016, the number of things that must never be allowed to happen again was only eight behind the number of things that must never happen again. Now that discrepancy has increased to 10, showing that DoSH is failing in its job of explicitly banning things that have happened but should never have.”

The Labour peer Lord Knotagain, himself a former Minister for Happenings, blamed the dispute on the decision by the coalition Government in 2013 to split the Happenings Ministry into DoSH and MoPH which, he said, “has given a higher priority to categorising happenings as ‘preventable’ or ‘non-preventable’ and assigning responsibility for them happening, rather than taking action to stop them, by disallowing them if necessary.”

Spokespeople for DoSH and MoPH rounded on Lord Knotagain, pointing out that while he was in charge the figures for stressful happenings were at an all-time high and the phrase ‘must never be allowed to happen again’ was scarcely recorded at all.

The Prime Minister rebuked both DoSH and MoPH for bickering over this vital matter and pledged to inaugurate an inquiry into their dispute, resolve their differences and “take all necessary steps” to ensure that it was never allowed to happen again.

The number of times the phrase “the Prime Minister pledged” occurred in the national press last year was 27, compared with 41 in 201