Portrait of the week

Home EDF Energy said it would put up prices by 3.9 per cent. BT Sport spent £897 million on the rights to show Champions League football for three years, provoking a 10 per cent fall in BSkyB shares. The rate of inflation fell from 2.7 per cent to 2.2, as measured by the consumer prices index; as measured by the retail prices index, it fell from 3.2 per cent to 2.6 per cent. Unemployment fell by 48,000 to 2.47 million. Barratts, with 75 shoe shops, went into administration. Flybe, the Exeter-based airline, announced plans to cut 500 jobs. Plans were published for an airport on an artificial island off Sheppey in the Thames Estuary, to be called Britannia airport.

Home Three Police Federation representatives accused of giving misleading accounts of a meeting with Andrew Mitchell over the Plebgate scandal are to undergo a second investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed, 27, whose movements are restricted under a Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measure (known as a T-Pim) went missing after changing into a burka at a mosque in Acton, west London. Paul Gambaccini, the BBC broadcaster, was arrested on suspicion of historical sexual offences unconnected with Jimmy Savile’s crimes. An eight-year-old boy shot and wounded a five-year-old at Wickford, Essex. London Gateway, a container port capable of taking the biggest ships, opened just west of Canvey Island, Essex.

Home A storm passed over England, with plenty of warning. The strongest gust, of 99mph, was recorded at Needles Old Battery, Isle of Wight. Of 570,000 households that lost power, 160,000 were left without it by sunset. About 200 trees fell on railway lines. A crane collapsed on to the roof of the Cabinet Office in Whitehall. A fourth big energy company, of Britain’s six, announced price rises, making the average increase 9.1 per cent. Tony Cocker, the chief executive of E.on, told the Commons energy committee that he had written to David Cameron, the Prime Minister, suggesting a full investigation of the market. A woman intent upon visiting the Alhambra found she was on an aeroplane to Grenada in the West Indies.

Home The government agreed a guaranteed price for electricity that persuaded a consortium led by the French-owned EDF Energy and including Chinese investors to agree to build the Hinkley Point C power station in Somerset. The strike price agreed was £92.50 per megawatt hour (compared with a current wholesale price of £45). Following an energy price rise by SSE of 8.2 per cent, British Gas said it was to raise prices by 9.2 per cent and NPower by 10.4 per cent. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that this was ‘extremely disappointing news’. Sir John Major, a former prime minister, helpfully suggested a windfall tax on energy profits. The Daily Mirror suggested that Mr Cameron was advising people to wear jumpers.

Home Shares in Royal Mail, floated on the stock market at 330p, began trading at 475p. SSE, the energy supplier, raised prices by 8.2 per cent, and other suppliers were expected to follow suit. Ofwat, the water regulator, said it would block Thames Water’s request to increase bills by up to 8 per cent next year. The rate of inflation, measured by the Consumer Prices Index, remained at 2.7 per cent, and, as measured by the Retail Prices Index fell from 3.3 to 3.2 per cent. The average price of a property in the United Kingdom rose to a record £247,000. Unemployment fell to 2.49 million, and those with work rose to a record 29.87 million. Eleanor Catton, aged 28, won the Booker prize with The Luminaries.

Home An issue of shares in Royal Mail was oversubscribed, pushing valuation well above initial forecasts of £3.3 billion. The IMF forecast British growth for 2013 to be 1.4 per cent; its estimate in July had been 0.9 per cent. The Commons Treasury select committee warned the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the government ‘Help to Buy’ scheme was likely to ‘raise house prices rather than stimulate new supply’. Peter Higgs, from Britain, and François Englert from Belgium, shared the Nobel prize for physics, for their work on the Higgs boson. Publicising GCHQ information ‘hands the advantage to the terrorists.

Home Shares in Royal Mail are to be sold by the middle of this month, before postmen can go on strike; the company is valued at between £2.6 billion and £3.3 billion. The Church Commissioners, an investment arm of the Church of England, became part owners of the resurrected Williams and Glyn’s bank which will open branches relinquished by the Royal Bank of Scotland. The minimum wage for those aged 16 or 17 rose by 4p to £3.72 an hour; for those aged 18-20 by 5p to £5.03; and for those older by 12p to £6.31. Poundland, which has 458 shops in the British Isles, said it wanted to open 1,000. Teachers belonging to the NUT and NASUWT unions went on strike for a day, closing 2,500 schools.

Home The General Medical Council said it was dropping cases against four doctors who worked at Stafford Hospital at the height of the scandal of neglect and abuse there. Bail until October was given to eight people, including five policemen, arrested during investigation of an incident last year in which Andrew Mitchell, the former chief whip, was accused of calling police ‘plebs’, which he denies. Two men were charged with the computer theft of £1.3 million from Barclays Bank in Swiss Cottage, north London. A photograph was published of the Queen in a cardigan entertaining the prime minister of New Zealand at Balmoral in a room with a tartan carpet, an electric fire, a stuffed toy corgi and twin beds for the real thing.

Home The government sold 6 per cent of Lloyds Banking Group to big investors for £3.2 billion. It still owns 32.7 per cent of the bank. Barclays published details of plans to raise £5.95 billion by issuing new shares. The Financial Conduct Authority warned Barclays of a £50 million fine for a deal with Qatari investors in 2008, in which it failed to ‘act with integrity’ towards shareholders; Barclays contests this. Blitz Games of Leamington, a computer games designers, closed its doors after 23 years. Inflation measured by the consumer prices index fell from 2.8 per cent to 2.7 per cent, but by the retail prices index rose from 3.1 to 3.3 per cent.

Home George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that the British economy was ‘turning a corner’, with ‘tentative signs of a balanced, broad based and sustainable recovery’. Unemployment fell to 7.7 per cent for the quarter May to July from 7.8 in the previous quarter. Jaguar Land Rover is to create 1,700 jobs at Solihull, where it is planning production of aluminium chassis. The Highways Agency published details of a new 25-mile stretch of toll-road on the A14 bypassing Huntingdon. Churches on the Isle of Sheppey held prayers of thanksgiving that no one was killed in a crash in the fog involving 130 cars on the bridge to the island.

Home Having recalled Parliament to debate British military action over Syria, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, found the government defeated, much to his surprise, by 285-272, thanks to 30 Conservatives and nine Liberal Democrats voting with the opposition. He immediately told the Commons: ‘It is clear to me that the British Parliament, reflecting the views of the British people, does not want to see British military action. I get that and the government will act accordingly.’ Next day, Lord Ashdown, the former leader of the Lib Dems, tweeted: ‘In 50 years trying to serve my country I have never felt so depressed/ashamed.

Home The nation settled down to watch the Paralympic Games on television. Some 2.5 million tickets had been sold for events. The government reconsidered building a third runway at Heathrow after all. Grant Shapps, the housing minister, said that ‘all options should be considered’, even though the Transport Secretary, Justine Greening, whose constituency is under the flight path, has campaigned against it. The former minister Tim Yeo asked whether David Cameron, the Prime Minister, was a man or a mouse. Ms Greening said that there was no reason to delay signing a contract with FirstGroup to run the West Coast main line; Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Trains lost the franchise, called for a reconsideration by Parliament and then went to court.

Home The cost of the HS2 railway line was expected by some in the Treasury to rise from £43 billion to £73 billion. The number of new homes being built in England rose by 6 per cent in the three months to June. The United Kingdom has lost more than 40 per cent of its bank and building society branches since 1989, according to a report by Nottingham University. The proportion of candidates achieving A or A* grades at A-level fell a little to 26.3 per cent, from 26.6 per cent in 2012. The overall pass rate rose marginally to 98.1 per cent from 98 per cent. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, told the BBC that he was suffering from a ‘protruding disc’ in his back.

Home The population of the United Kingdom rose by 420,000, to 63.7 million, by the middle of last year, with the number of births, 813,000 (more than a quarter to mothers born abroad), being the highest since 1972. Thames Water asked the regulator Ofwat to allow it to impose a 12 per cent increase on bills. Unemployment fell by 4,000 to 2.51 million in the second quarter. Regulated rail fares will rise by 4.1 per cent, a percentage point higher than the rate of inflation in July, which, measured by the Retail Prices Index, fell from 3.3 to 3.1 per cent, and, measured by the Consumer Prices Index, from 2.9 to 2.8 per cent. The rate of house price inflation rose from 2.9 per cent to 3.1 per cent. Jeremy Paxman appeared on Newsnight with a beard.

Home Retail sales enjoyed their fastest July growth in seven years, thanks to demand for beer, sun cream, swimwear and barbecue food. Manufacturing output rose by 1.9 per cent in June, following declines in both April and May. Lloyds Banking Group announced profits of £2.1 billion for the first half of the year and António Horta-Osório, its chief executive, said he expected it to pay out 70 per cent of profits in dividends by 2015. Sir Ian Andrews resigned as the chairman of the Serious Organised Crime Agency after failing to declare a directorship in a management consultancy firm.

Home Barclays decided to issue £5.8 billion in shares to meet capital reserve requirements from the Bank of England. Lord Howell of Guildford, a former energy secretary, who does not speak for the government but happens to be George Osborne’s father in law, asking a question in the Lords about fracking for shale gas, said: ‘There are large and uninhabited and desolate areas. Certainly in part of the north-east.’ He later apologised. Vicky Pryce, the disgraced former wife of Chris Huhne, the disgraced former Cabinet minister, had her companionship of the Order of the Bath ‘cancelled and annulled’. A third Army reservist who took part in an SAS selection training exercise in the Brecon Beacons died. A £1.

Home The Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to a boy, weighing 8lb 6oz, an heir to the crown, third in line to the throne. Great public excitement was expressed by taking photographs of an official notice of the birth posted on a gilt easel inside the railings of Buckingham Palace. Bells rang and gun salutes were fired. Mel Smith, the comedian, died, aged 60. Thunderstorms cut off power and disrupted train services after a fortnight of hot weather reached temperatures of 33.5˚C in London, the highest since 2006. Many-fruited beardless moss, found in only four locations in the world, may have disappeared from two places in Cornwall.

Home Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, put into ‘special measures’ 11 hospitals among the 14 with the worst death rates examined in an inquiry by Professor Sir Bruce Keogh. Professor Sir Brian Jarman, a contributor to the report, said: ‘If you don’t have enough trained nurses, as with doctors, you get higher death rates.’ The government announced that the Liverpool Care Pathway (for the dying) would be phased out after a review headed by Lady Neuberger found that the strategy, which can entail withdrawal of food and drink, was being ‘misused’. The government decided not to press ahead with legislation to impose plain packaging for cigarettes. The BBC announced that it had so far spent £4.

Home There was a fine game of hunt-the-issue over the process to find a replacement, as parliamentary candidate in Falkirk, for the Labour MP Eric Joyce (who had decided not to stand again after being convicted of assaulting a Labour whip in the Strangers’ Bar). The union Unite was accused by Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour party, of signing up its members to the Falkirk constituency Labour party without their knowledge. Unite’s chosen candidate Karie Murphy had been the officer manager of Tom Watson MP. Mr Watson resigned as Labour’s national election co-ordinator. The next day, Mr Miliband referred the imbroglio at Falkirk to the Scottish police, but not before a Tory MP, Henry Smith, had written to the Chief Constable alleging fraud.

Home Business confidence in Britain was at its highest level since 2007, according to a survey by the British Chambers of Commerce, which said it expected gross domestic product to have grown by 0.6 per cent in the second quarter of the year.Ofgem, the energy regulator, warned that spare electricity capacity could fall to 2 per cent by 2015, increasing the risk of blackouts. The regulator urged companies to deal with theft of electricity, a third of it said to power cannabis farms. Butterflies and bees were found to have suffered badly from the cold May. Channel 4 is to broadcast the dawn call to prayer each day during Ramadan.