Portrait of the week

Home Housing benefit for council and housing association tenants was reduced by 14 per cent for those deemed to have one spare bedroom and by 25 per cent for those with two or more spare bedrooms. Council Tax Benefit, claimed by 5.9 million families, was transformed into Council Tax Support, supplied by local authority schemes. The Financial Services Authority was replaced by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. In the National Health Service, GP-led groups took control of local budgets and a new board called NHS England began to oversee day-to-day running of services. The introduction of a 111 health helpline throughout England was delayed after some pilot schemes proved unsatisfactory, with callers holding on for hours.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, in a speech designed to show that Britain was no longer to be a ‘soft touch’ for immigrants, said that people from the European Union would have to show they had a ‘genuine chance of getting work’ in order to claim UK unemployment benefits for more than six months. The UK Border Agency was to be abolished, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, told the Commons, because its performance was ‘not good enough’, and ‘the number of illegal immigrants removed does not keep up with the number of people who are here illegally’. The agency would be split up and returned to the Home Office, with one half focusing on the visa system and the other on immigration law enforcement.

Home In what he called a ‘fiscally neutral’ Budget, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, confronted a reduced forecast of gross domestic product for 2013 from 1.2 per cent to 0.6 per cent and a further delay until 2017-18 in reducing the burden of public sector debt, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. Most government departments would have to cut a further 2 per cent of their spending over the next two years, saving about £2.5 billion. Changes in state pensions, introduced a year earlier than expected, would save the Treasury almost £6 billion a year by 2016-17, some of it to be used for infrastructure spending.

Home Chris Huhne, the energy secretary until last year, and his former wife Vicky Pryce were each sentenced to eight months in jail for perverting the course of justice. Huhne’s sentence was reduced by 10 per cent as he had pleaded guilty, on the eve of his trial. Abu Qatada was returned to prison for allegedly breaching his bail conditions, which prohibit his use of mobile phones. The government went to the Court of Appeal to have a ban on his deportation to Jordan lifted. A bomb thought to have been planted by Irish republicans exploded as police responded to a call on the outskirts of Belfast, but none was hurt. Kenny Ball, the jazz-band leader who had a hit with ‘Midnight in Moscow’ in 1962, died, aged 82.

Home George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer failed to dissuade EU finance minsters in Brussels from endorsing a plan to cap bankers’ pay bonuses. City banks contemplated taking the EU to court over it. HSBC’s annual profits fell by 6 per cent to £14 billion, including a loss of £700 million made in Britain. The Royal Bank of Scotland, 81 per cent of which is owned by the government, made its fifth annual loss in a row, of £5.17 billion. Sir Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, suggested it should be split up and sold. Lloyds Banking Group, 40 per cent of which is owned by the government, reduced its losses to £570 million, from £3.5 billion the year before. Banks reduced their lending by £2.

Home Moody’s reduced Britain’s credit rating from AAA to AA1. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said: ‘Far from weakening our resolve to deliver our economic recovery plan, this decision redoubles it.’ Sir Mervyn King, the governor of the bank of England, was outvoted on its Monetary Policy Committee when he proposed more quantitative easing in February. Paul Tucker, the deputy governor, said that negative interest rates should be considered. Irfan Naseer, 31, Irfan Khalid, 27, and Ashik Ali, 27, from Birmingham, were found guilty at Woolwich Crown Court of plotting to recruit a team of six or eight suicide bombers to carry out a spectacular bombing campaign.

Home Unemployment fell by 14,000 between August and November to 2.5 million, with the number in work rising by 154,000 to 29.7 million, meaning that 580,000 more people were in work than a year before. David Cameron toured India with an entourage of trade delegates. ‘Britain wants to be your partner of choice,’ he said. His visit came days after India suspended a £480 million contract to buy 12 Westland helicopters, following the arrest in Italy over bribery allegations of the chief executive of Finmeccanica, an Italian firm that makes AgustaWestland helicopters in Britain. The government auction of a spectrum for 4G mobile phones raised £2.34 billion; the Office for Budget Responsibility had forecast £3.5 billion.

Home Findus frozen beef lasagne was found to be 100 per cent horsemeat, and Tesco frozen ‘Everyday Value’ spaghetti bolognese 60 per cent horse. French suppliers blamed a Romanian abattoir. Waitrose withdrew frozen beef meatballs in which pork was thought to be present. Owen Paterson, the environment secretary, told the food industry to publish soon the results of their own testing of meat products. He then flew to Brussels for talks. Police raided a slaughterhouse in West Yorkshire that the Food Standards Agency believed had supplied horse carcasses to a meat company at Aberystwyth.

Home  The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill was given its second reading in the Commons by 400 votes to 175. Of Conservative MPs, 127 voted for it, and 136 against. David Cameron, who did not attend the debate, called the result ‘an important step forward’. The bill does not apply to Scotland, which has its own plans, or to Northern Ireland, which does not. A provision of the bill prohibits the Church of England and the Church in Wales from conducting same-sex weddings, which are against canon law (itself part of English law). On the day of the confirmation of his election as Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd Justin Welby said: ‘I support the Church of England’s position on this.

Home Britain decided to send 40 ‘military advisers’ to Mali, 70 more with an RAF Sentinel surveillance aircraft and 20 with a C17 transport plane, and 200 to neighbouring states in a training role; Britain was ‘keen’, according to Downing Street, to aid France there. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, visited Algeria. The British economy shrank by 0.3 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to the Office for National Statistics, meaning that there was no growth at all last year. The FTSE 100 share index went above the 6,300 mark for the first time since May 2008. Qatari Diar, the property arm of the emirate of Qatar, put its £3 billion development project at the Chelsea Barracks under review.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, at last delivered his speech on Europe, postponed during the Algerian hostage crisis. He wanted to ‘negotiate a new settlement with our European partners’, and before the end of 2017, ‘when we have negotiated that new settlement, we will give the British people a referendum with a very simple in or out choice. To stay in the EU on these new terms; or come out altogether. It will be an in/out referendum.’ The government started trying to hurry through a Bill to change succession to the Crown. Blockbuster, the DVD rental firm, went into administration and announced the closure of 160 of its 528 shops. Tom Albanese resigned as the chief executive of Rio Tinto after the company wrote off £8.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, brought forward his speech on new relations with the European Union from 22 January when it was realised that it was the 50th anniversary of the Elysée treaty between Germany and France. Britain went to war in Mali by sending two transport planes in support of the French invasion directed against Islamist groups. The rights of a British Airways employee, Nadia Eweida, had been violated by her being forbidden to wear a cross at work, the European Court of Human Rights ruled.

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that, for the ‘coalition government with a full tank of gas, it’s full steam ahead’. He announced a ‘mid-term review’, but an audit that showed which pledges had not been met was held back. ‘We are married, not to each other,’ he said at a joint press conference with Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister, ‘So, to me it’s not a marriage, it is, if you like, a Ronseal deal — it does what it says on the tin.’ He promised details in coming weeks on such things as ‘capping the potentially huge cost’ of social care, and extending the HS2 high-speed rail line from Birmingham to the north of England.

Home On the eve of a speech by David Cameron, the Prime Minister, on the EU, Andrew Duff MEP, the leader of the Union of European Federalists, suggested that Britain could be offered second-class ‘associate member’ status in the EU. ‘If the British cannot support the trend towards more integration in Europe,’ Jacques Delors, the former president of the EU Commission said in an interview with a German paper, ‘we can nevertheless remain friends, but on a different basis.

Home Banks should erect a protective ring-fence round their high-street operations, the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards recommended, and moreover it should be ‘electrified’. The metaphor meant that regulators should have the power to break up banks that misbehaved. The ten members of the commission included the next Archbishop of Canterbury, the Rt Revd Justin Welby, and ‘Nigella’s Dad’, as one paper put it, Lord Lawson of Blaby. Mark Carney, the next governor of the Bank of England, suggested that economic growth should be a target, rather than inflation. The government had to borrow £17.5 billion in November, £1.

January Britain’s public debt rose above £1,000 billion for the first time. Fred Goodwin, the former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, was stripped of his knighthood. The High Speed 2 rail link between London and Birmingham was given the go-ahead. Police removed protestors’ tents in Parliament Square under a new act. Abu Qatada won an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights against deportation to Jordan. In Syria protestors continued to be killed. In Saudi Arabia 28,000 women applied for jobs in lingerie shops, in which only men could previously serve. February The High Court ruled that prayers said at meetings of Bideford council were unlawful. Police removed tents from a protest camp at St Paul’s, set up on 15 October.

Home In his Autumn Statement, held nearer the winter solstice, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, confronted the need to extend austerity measures for reducing the deficit to 2018. The economy would shrink by 0.1 per cent in 2012. He cut corporation tax to 21 per cent from 2014, cancelled January’s fuel tax rise and promised consultation on tax incentives for shale-gas exploitation. All but four Whitehall departments would be asked to save an extra 1 per cent next year and a further 2 per cent the year after, with the hoped-for £5 billion going to schools and roads. Battersea should get its own Underground connection.

Home Rotherham Borough Council took away three children from foster parents because they belonged to the UK Independence Party. ‘If the party mantra is, for example, ending the active promotion of multiculturalism I have to think about that,’ said Joyce Thacker, Rotherham’s Strategic Director of Children and Young People’s Services. Rochdale Council said that 12 of its workers were being investigated following the conviction last May of nine men who ran a child sex ring. Greater Manchester Police said that boys ‘were victims of physical and sexual abuse’ by the late Sir Cyril Smith, the MP for Rochdale, in the 1960s. Boris Johnson was mistaken for Boris Becker in Delhi on a tour promoting London business.

Home The General Synod of the Church of England voted against the ordination of women bishops. The measure required a two thirds majority in each house of the Synod, but the voting was 44 for and three against with two abstentions in the House of Bishops, 148 for and 45 against in the House of Clergy, and 132 for and 74 against in the House of Laity. Kweku Adoboli, a trader with UBS, was jailed for seven years for fraud that lost the bank £1.4 billion, the largest trading loss in British banking history. The G8 summit next year is to be held at Lough Erne golf resort near Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh. The number of people in England waiting more than a year for NHS hospital treatment fell to 1,600 from 20,000 a year before, although the earlier statistics were said to be unreliable.

Home Abu Qatada, detained in Britain for seven years although not charged here, but wanted on terrorist charges in Jordan, could not be deported, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission ruled, because evidence might be used against him that had been obtained from the torture of others; so he was freed on bail. The annual rate of inflation by the Consumer Prices Index rose to 2.7 per cent in October, from 2.2 per cent in September, and to 3.2 per cent, from 2.6 per cent, by the Retail Prices Index. Unemployment fell by 49,000 to 2.51 million in the three months to September. The Rt Revd Justin Welby, Bishop of Durham, is to be enthroned as the 105th Archbishop of Canterbury on 21 March 2013.