Portrait of the week

Home Arlene Foster, the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland, said that the referendum in Ireland on abortion had no impact on the law in the province, where it is a devolved matter. But the Northern Ireland Assembly has not sat since January 2017, when power-sharing arrangements broke down. The DUP currently provides the British government with a parliamentary majority. Ireland had voted by 66.4 to 33.6 per cent (with a turnout of 64.1 per cent) to repeal the eighth amendment of the constitution, which gives equal rights to women and the unborn. The only constituency to vote against the repeal was Donegal, a county of Ulster not belonging to Northern Ireland.

Home Marks & Spencer announced plans to close 100 of its 1,035 shops by 2022, hoping to move a third of its sales online; the costs of the plans brought its annual profits down by almost two-thirds, to £66.8 million. Govia Thameslink Railway, which runs Great Northern, Thameslink and Southern, cancelled 160 trains, 7 per cent of the total, the day after it changed all its timetables. Northern trains were also affected. Chris Grayling, the Transport Secretary, announced that, as expected, his department would run the East Coast Main Line until 2020, after the franchise holders, Stagecoach and Virgin, pulled out of their agreement.

Home Wages rose quicker than inflation in the first quarter of 2018, at an annual rate of 2.9 per cent, against 2.7 per cent rate for inflation. Unemployment fell to 1.42 million — at 4.2 per cent the lowest level since 1975. BT said it would cut 13,000 jobs over three years, about 12 per cent of its workforce, to save £1.5 billion. Network Rail surveyed 10 million trees by drone to see how many it might cut down. Plans were approved for a Silvertown road tunnel linking the Royal Docks north of the Thames with the Greenwich peninsula south of the river. Meghan Markle’s father, a bankrupt living in Mexico, felt unwell on the eve of her wedding to Prince Harry. The government said it would publish a white paper on Brexit before the EU summit next month.

Home The prospect of Brexit in name only hovered on the horizon as the government contemplated an association agreement with the EU, which Jacob Rees-Mogg dismissed as ‘second-tier EU membership’. The cabinet’s Brexit sub-committee considered two ways of coping with the Irish problem: either a customs partnership with the EU, in which Britain would collect tariffs at the Irish border on behalf of the EU, or a combination of technology and trusted trader schemes to avoid a hard border. Peers voted 335 to 244 for an amendment, introduced by the Conservative Viscount Hailsham, to the EU Withdrawal Bill which would enable MPs to send ministers back to renegotiate with Brussels if parliament rejected the Brexit deal presented to it.

Home No. 10 insisted: ‘We will not be staying in the customs union or joining a customs union.’ The undertaking came after a defeat for the government on the matter in the House of Lords and before a vote in the House of Commons. The government proposed two alternatives: one being a ‘customs partnership’ in which the UK would collect tariffs on the EU’s behalf on goods coming from other countries, and the other being a ‘highly streamlined customs arrangement’.

Home Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, apologised in Parliament for the treatment of immigrants from the Commonwealth from before 1971, known as the ‘Windrush generation’ (after the Empire Windrush, the ship that brought West Indian workers to England in 1948). The 1971 Immigration Act allowed Commonwealth citizens then living in the United Kingdom indefinite leave to remain, but the Home Office kept no records of these. Some had lost their jobs, others had been refused National Health Service treatment, and others threatened with deportation. Theresa May, the Prime Minister, apologised to Caribbean heads of government who were in London for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

Home Parliament was in recess when Theresa May, the Prime Minister, agreed with America and France that the international community should respond to the chemical attack reported from Syria. It was not certain in any case that Parliament would back direct action by Britain. Yulia Skripal, who with her father Sergei was poisoned in Salisbury on 4 March, was discharged from hospital and taken to a safe place. Richard Osborn-Brooks, 78, who killed a burglar with a screwdriver with which he had been threatened, learnt that he would not be charged. He and his disabled wife had to leave their house for fear of revenge by associates of Henry Vincent, the dead man. People removed from a fence bouquets of flowers commemorating the burglar.

Home Alison Saunders said she would relinquish her position as the Director of Public Prosecutions when her five-year contract ends in October. Cressida Dick, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, told the Times that she was ditching the previously embraced principle of believing all complaints of sexual assault. ‘We should have an open mind when a person walks in,’ she said. In February, 15 people were murdered in London and 14 in New York; in March it was 22 and 21. On 2 April two teenagers were shot in London; one died at the scene and the other the day after. Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, said that the sale of ivory items of whatever age would be made illegal.

Home ‘We recognise that anti-Semitism has occurred in pockets within the Labour Party,’ Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, said. ‘I am sincerely sorry for the pain which has been caused.’ His remarks were released before the publication of an open letter to Labour MPs from the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council which said Mr Corbyn was incapable of contemplating anti-Semitism seriously ‘because he is so ideologically fixed within a far-left worldview that is instinctively hostile to mainstream Jewish communities’.

Home Britain and the European Union agreed on a transitional period after Brexit on 29 March 2019 until the end of 2020 in which Britain can make trade deals and EU citizens will be able to claim UK residency. The Irish border question was unresolved. British fisherfolk were sold down the river, despite an undertaking a week earlier by Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, and Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson. In a joint statement, the two politicians had promised: ‘Britain will leave the CFP [Common Fisheries Policy] as of March 2019.’ In fact, Britain will merely be ‘consulted’ on fishing quotas during the transitional period.

Home Theresa May, the Prime Minister, told the Commons that the chemical that put in hospital Sergei Skripal, a Russian spy who had defected to Britain, his daughter Yulia, and the policeman who visited their home in Salisbury, belonged to a group of nerve agents called Novichok, developed by Russia. She said that Britain must take extensive measures, should there be no adequate explanation from Russia within two days; there was none.

Home Sergei Skripal, aged 66, and his daughter Yulia were found in a state of collapse on a bench outside a shopping centre in Salisbury. Mr Skripal, a retired Russian military intelligence officer, was jailed by Russia in 2006 on charges of giving secrets to MI6; he was deported in a swap of spies in 2010. Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, said that the incident had ‘echoes of the death of Alexander Litvinenko’. Public Health England threatened food manufacturers and supermarkets with new laws unless they reduced the calories in portions of crisps, pizzas and pies.

Home Crisis loomed over Brexit negotiations as Theresa May, the Prime Minister, travelled to the north-east to explain ‘this Government’s vision of what our future economic partnership with the European Union should look like’. Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, had announced that its Brexit policy was now ‘to negotiate a new comprehensive UK-EU customs union’ that would still (somehow) ‘ensure the UK has a say in future trade deals’. Sir Keir Starmer, Labour’s Brexit spokesman, had said earlier that the party would back an amendment to the Government’s delayed Trade Bill hatched by the Conservative Remainer Anna Soubry, to keep Britain in a customs union.

Home Someone called Jan Sarkocy said that, as a Czech Security Service agent in London under the name Jan Dymic, he met Jeremy Corbyn several times in 1986 and 1987 and gave him money; Mr Corbyn called his account false and warned newspapers that reported such allegations ‘change is coming’. Henry Bolton, 54, was removed as leader of Ukip at a special meeting, and then returned to his girlfriend, 25, whose text messages about black people had caused him trouble. Theresa May, the Prime Minister, launched a year-long review of higher education, but ruled out abolishing tuition fees, which Labour promised to do.

Home The Charity Commission said it would hold a statutory inquiry into a scandal in which Oxfam staff paid for prostitutes in Haiti in 2011. Penny Lawrence resigned as deputy chief executive of the charity, saying that allegations had been raised about Roland van Hauwermeiren, Oxfam’s country director in Chad, before he moved to Haiti. He resigned in 2011, when Oxfam referred to unspecified ‘serious misconduct’. Penny Mordaunt, the International Development Secretary, said that no organisation could be a government partner if it did not ‘have the moral leadership to do the right thing’. Last year, Oxfam received £32 million from the government.

Home Stagecoach and Virgin could only manage to run the East Coast rail franchise for a few more weeks, Chris Grayling, the Transport Secretary, said, because ‘Stagecoach got its numbers wrong. It overbid.’ To cut 2,000 Royal Marines and the Royal Navy’s two specialist landing ships, a plan considered by the Ministry of Defence, would be ‘militarily illiterate’, the Commons Defence Select Committee said. Northamptonshire County Council gave notice that it would undertake no new expenditure because it expected to be overspent by £21.1 million by the end of this tax year; last year it opened a £53 million headquarters. The government proposed changes in the law that prevents heterosexual couples forming civil partnerships.

Home The EU published its negotiating position on Britain’s period of transition, from 30 March 2019 until 31 December 2020. Britain would have to abide by the rules of the single market, customs union, free movement and decisions of the European Court of Justice, as well as new EU laws. Britain would have no representatives at the table. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the chairman of the European Research Group among the Conservatives, said: ‘This will be the first time since the Norman Conquest the UK has accepted rules imposed by a foreign power without having any say over them.’ The UK economy expanded by a half per cent in the last quarter of 2017 according to the Office for National Statistics, which was better than expected.

Home Boris Johnson went on manoeuvres again. The media were briefed that, in a meeting of the cabinet, he would call for the National Health Service to be given another £100 million a week. ‘Mr Johnson is the Foreign Secretary,’ Philip Hammond, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said. ‘I gave the Health Secretary an extra £6 billion at the recent Budget and we’ll look at departmental allocations again at the spending review when that takes place.’ No. 10 also slapped him down. ‘The Prime Minister and a large number of ministers made the point that cabinet discussions should remain private,’ said the official spokesman for Theresa May, the Prime Minister.

Home Carillion, the construction and service-provider with 20,000 employees and many contracts for the public sector, went into liquidation with debts of £1.5 billion, owing 30,000 businesses £1 billion. The government said it would pay employees and small businesses working on Carillion’s public contracts ‘to keep vital public services running rather than to provide a bailout on the failure of a commercial company’, as David Lidington, the minister for the Cabinet Office, told Parliament. Greg Clark, the Business Secretary, asked the Official Receiver to investigate the conduct of its directors; ‘Any evidence of misconduct will be taken very seriously,’ he said. The annual rate of inflation fell back a smidgen to 3 per cent in December, from 3.