It’s one that has resurfaced recently in our world, with the energy boss and environmental campaigner Dale Vince suggesting that the Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) subsidy for heat pumps would be better spent on the UK’s defence rather than handing well-off households £7500 to fit a heat pump. With £2.4 billion budgeted for over the next four years, it’s a fair challenge to government.

But let’s pose the same challenge to other areas of government, what would £2.4 billion buy?

Let’s just kick some numbers around. £2.4 billion would give a cash boost of £133,000 to every primary school in England and Wales. It would pay the average school energy bill for three years; it would pay to replace an obsolete school heating system or it could refurbish areas in need extending the building life by 5 years.

It could fund 20,000 additional police officers, if crime was your major concern, or increase the youth early intervention Turnaround Programme from supporting 20,500 high-risk children to 700,000 young people. Diverting just one in ten children from the justice system saves £113 million a year.

£2.4 billion could fund 45,000 new nurses or refurbish a thousand wards, if the priority was the NHS. But turning to our world for a moment, that sum could transform lives.

It would upgrade the insulation for 600,000 to 1,000,000 homes, depending on the measures required, taking £450 – £800 off energy bills for some of the poorest families in the country. It would cut NHS demand for ailments linked to cold homes, something I know our industry is well aware of.

But, as it stands, the choice is to subsidise heat pumps for the well-off. That might not sit comfortably with you and I but that’s where the “guns v butter” argument takes us. Given the political mood in the country, I’m not sure it is the right choice.