Moreover, and this is utterly bizarre, he appeared to concede that while he only found out about the bill on Thursday night, the Treasury already knew of its existence for some time. Why was the PM not told – if he wasn’t told? Did the Treasury or other members of the Government perhaps hope that the press and public would not notice the budget increase? Is a fuss only now being made because the media has run with it as a front page story? Or was there some strange breakdown in communication within the Government that meant the Treasury was calmly running a bill for £1.7 billion through its computers while a blissfully unaware PM was chatting about Ebola with his European partners?