Portrait of the week

Home Nadhim Zahawi, minister without portfolio and chairman of the Conservative party, was asked to explain how a penalty formed part of a £5 million tax payment he had made. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, asked Sir Laurie Magnus, his newly appointed ethics adviser, to examine whether Mr Zahawi had broken the code of conduct on ministerial behaviour. The appointment of Richard Sharp as chairman of the BBC was under review by William Shawcross, the Commissioner of Public Appointments, after it became known that in 2020, before his appointment, he had contacted Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, about an offer of a loan of £800,000 by Sam Blyth, an old friend of Mr Sharp’s, to Boris Johnson, then PM. The government borrowed £27.

Home The government prevented the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, passed by the Scottish parliament, from proceeding to royal assent, under Section 35 of the Scotland Act, because of its ‘serious adverse impact’ on the operation of the Equality Act 2010. It was blocked by a statutory instrument laid before parliament by the Scottish Secretary, Alister Jack. The Scottish National party leader in the Commons, Stephen Flynn, called opponents to the bill ‘rabid gammon’. Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, sought judicial review. Rishi Sunak, the British Prime Minister, had visited Scotland a few days before to help some Sea Scouts toast marshmallows and to have dinner with Ms Sturgeon.

Home Government ministers held short meetings with trade union representatives as strikes continued by ambulance drivers, teachers, bus drivers and driving test examiners. A bill was introduced to require some workers to provide a minimum level of service during strikes in the NHS, education, fire and rescue, border security, nuclear decommissioning and public transport. Evri, the courier formerly known as Hermes, said ‘Our service has not been as good as we would have liked’ as parcels were reported delayed or undelivered. James Cleverly, the Foreign Secretary, and Maros Sefcovic, a vice-president of the European Commission, held ‘cordial and constructive’ talks on Northern Ireland trade.

Home The Royal College of Emergency Medicine said some A&E departments were in a ‘complete state of crisis’. Railway workers belonging to the RMT union and Aslef began five days of strikes. Rail fares will rise by 5.9 per cent from March after the government decided to cap them; usually they go up a percentage point more than the July inflation figure, which in 2022 was 12.3 per cent. More than a million households with prepayment meters did not redeem their monthly energy support vouchers during the cold spell in December; postal strikes and difficulty of contacting suppliers were blamed. In December, the Bank of England had raised UK interest rates to their highest level for 14 years, to 3.5 per cent from 3 per cent.

Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, proposed in his speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet to treat China with ‘robust pragmatism’. The Chinese ambassador to Britain was summoned to the Foreign Office following the arrest and beating of a BBC journalist, Ed Lawrence, in Shanghai. Net migration reached 504,000 in the year to June – the highest recorded, the Office for National Statistics estimated. A man was arrested in Gloucestershire over the deaths of at least 27 people who drowned in the Channel in a dinghy last year. Migrants with symptoms of diphtheria would be put into isolation, ministers said, as more than 50 cases were detected.

Home The Supreme Court ruled that the Scottish government does not have the power to hold an independence referendum without the UK government’s consent. A meeting of NHS Scotland heard that ‘unscheduled care is going to fall over in the near term before planned care falls over’. One proposal was for rich people to pay; Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, repudiated the idea. Labour said that it would abolish the House of Lords and replace it with a ‘new, reformed upper chamber’. The Manston migrant processing centre, crowded during the summer with thousands who arrived in England on small boats, was cleared of people. The RMT union announced more rail strikes on 13, 14, 16 and 17 December and 3, 4, 6 and 7 January.

Home Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said, ‘We’re all going to be paying a bit more tax’ as he polished up his Autumn Statement. ‘The number one challenge we face is inflation,’ said Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister. The annual rate of inflation rose to 11.1 per cent from 10.1 per cent the month before. Regular pay increased by 5.7 per cent in the year to September but its real value fell by 2.7 per cent because of inflation. In a survey of grocery prices, the consumer group Which? found Heinz tomato ketchup had gone up 53 per cent in two years and Anchor spreadable butter by 45 per cent. Unemployment rose a little from 3.5 to 3.6 per cent, but an increase in the economically inactive was largely attributed to the long-term sick, of whom there are now 2.

Home Sir Gavin Williamson resigned from the cabinet as minister without portfolio following publication of texts he had sent (annoyed at not being invited to the Queen’s funeral) to the chief whip Wendy Morton, full of swear words. ‘There is a price for everything.’ A former civil servant said that Sir Gavin had told him to slit his throat, which he denied. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, agreed with Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, £35 billion of tax cuts and £25 billion of tax rises, in time for the Office for Budget Responsibility to peruse the proposals before the Autumn Statement next Thursday. The Bank of England had raised interest rates by 0.75 percentage points to 3 per cent.

Home Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, spoke in the Commons of an ‘invasion on our southern coast’ by migrants in small boats. ‘Let’s stop pretending that they are all refugees in distress,’ she said. ‘The whole country knows that is not true.’ She was reacting to a crisis at a migrant processing centre in Manston, Kent, built for 1,600 but housing 4,000. David Neal, the independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, called it ‘really dangerous’. He said an Afghan family had lived in a marquee there for 32 days. It was made more crowded after migrants were moved following an attack with three petrol bombs on a Border Force migrant centre in Dover by a man in a car who then killed himself. On Saturday alone, 990 migrants crossed the Channel.

Home Liz Truss said in a BBC interview as Prime Minister that she wanted to ‘say sorry for the mistakes that have been made’. Declaring that she would lead the Conservatives into the next election, she addressed blocs of MPs: the One Nation group one day, the European Research Group the next. She watched Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer whom she had just appointed to replace Kwasi Kwarteng, deliver a statement to the Commons reversing most of the provisions of the ‘fiscal event’ of 23 September. The new Chancellor announced the end of current subsidies for domestic energy bills in April, preferring something that ‘will cost the taxpayer significantly less than planned while ensuring enough support for those in need’.

Home The Bank of England warned of a ‘material risk’ to financial stability as it stepped in to buy a wider range of gilts. But markets got the jitters again when Andrew Bailey, its governor, announced to pension funds: ‘You’ve got three days left.’ Kwasi Kwarteng, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, would present his ‘fiscal statement’ to parliament on 31 October, Halloween, not 23 November as originally planned. The Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank said that under current plans, public spending would need to be cut by £60 billion a year by 2026-27 to put the economy on a safe footing. GDP shrank by 0.3 per cent in August. British Cycling announced an eight-year sponsorship deal with the oil company Shell.

Home Kwasi Kwarteng, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, presented a far-reaching ‘fiscal event’ (ineligible to be called a Budget), said to have cut more tax than any measure since 1972. The markets’ immediate response was to sell pounds, and sterling fell to $1.07 (though the euro also continued in its own decline against the dollar and the Chinese yuan fell sharply). The Treasury defensively said it would publish proposals for dealing with its debt and the Bank of England said it would buy government bonds to help ‘restore orderly market conditions’. The IMF spoke out, inviting the government to ‘re-evaluate’ its tax changes.

Home Queen Elizabeth was buried in St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, beside her husband and father, after a funeral at Westminster Abbey. In the ten days of mourning, six days were devoted to a lying-in-state at Westminster Hall, for which the public queued around the clock, often for more than five miles and ten hours. A livestream broadcast on television accustomed viewers to Gentlemen at Arms with swan-feather plumes and Yeomen of the Guard with ribboned hats guarding the catafalque. The public were courteous, silent and moved. King Charles completed a tour to Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff during the days of mourning, making speeches, meeting crowds and speaking in Welsh.

Home The body of Queen Elizabeth lay in state at Westminster Hall, in a coffin draped in the royal standard on which were placed the orb and sceptre, before her funeral in Westminster Abbey on 19 September, declared a bank holiday. She had died at Balmoral on the afternoon of 8 September, two days after appointing Liz Truss Prime Minister there. The new King took the name Charles III. In a televised address the next day, he said: ‘As the Queen herself did with such unswerving devotion, I too now solemnly pledge myself, throughout the remaining time God grants me, to uphold the constitutional principles at the heart of our nation.

Home Liz Truss, the new Prime Minister, said in a speech outside 10 Downing Street: ‘Boris Johnson delivered Brexit, the Covid vaccine and stood up to Russian aggression. History will see him as a hugely consequential prime minister.’ For her part: ‘I am confident that together we can ride out the storm.’ Earlier, on being elected leader of the Conservative party, she had said: ‘I know that we will deliver, we will deliver, we will deliver.’ She had been elected by party members ahead of Rishi Sunak by 81,326 votes to 60,399 (57.4 per cent to 42.6). Turnout was 82.6 per cent.

Home Liz Truss, the contender for the Conservative party leadership who is expected to become prime minister next Tuesday, resisted temptations to say what she would do about the national energy price crisis. But she was said to have in her pocket licences for new drilling in the North Sea. Nadhim Zahawi, the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the time being, said that even people earning £45,000 a year would need help with their energy bills this winter. The price cap for energy set by the regulator Ofgem will rise by 80 per cent in October, with electricity going up from 28p per kilowatt hour to 52p and gas from 7p to 15p, making a typical annual energy bill currently £1,971 rise to £3,549.