Portrait of the week

HomeThe European Court of Human Rights ruled that Britain would not violate human rights by extraditing to the United States five terrorist suspects: Abu Hamza, Babar Ahmad, Adel Abdul Bary, Talha Ahsan and Khaled al-Fawwaz; the case of Haroon Aswat, who suffers from schizophrenia, was adjourned. A car bomb was found at Newry, Co. Down. The Independent Police Complaints Commission investigated ten incidents of alleged racism involving 18 officers. Football clubs should pay for policing further away from stadiums, Assistant Chief Constable Andy Holt said on behalf of the Association of Chief Police Officers. A fire in a goods yard in Canning Town cut off electricity for 88,000.

HomeNick Clegg, the deputy Prime Minister, said he could not support as they stood government plans to hold in camera civil court cases involving secret intelligence. The government also proposed changing the law to allow it to monitor the telephone calls, emails, texts and visits to websites of everyone in the country. UK Biobank began making available to researchers information on 500,000 volunteer patients in the National Health Service. The government said it had accepted ‘virtually all’ of the 28 recommendations in a report commissioned from Mary Portas on the rejuvenation of high streets, including reduced charges for parking.

HomePeter Cruddas resigned as co-treasurer of the Conservative party after being recorded by undercover reporters from the Sunday Times encouraging donations with the prospect of private dinners with David Cameron, the Prime Minister, in his Downing Street flat. ‘Hundred grand is not Premier League. It’s not bad. It’s probably bottom of the Premier League,’ he said. ‘If you donate, you will be invited to events where the Prime Minister is.’ Downing Street rapidly published details of all Conservative donors who have had dinner there with Mr Cameron. German Gorbuntsov, a former Russian banker, was shot several times on the Isle of Dogs, where he lived, and taken to hospital, with a police guard. The temperature at Aboyne in Aberdeenshire reached 23.

HomeIn the Budget, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, raised the threshold for workers to start paying income tax at standard rate to £9,205 and announced a gradual reduction of the rate for those earning more than £150,000 from 50 per cent. He imposed a higher level of stamp duty on houses costing more than £2 million and promised measures to make people pay. Child benefit would be withdrawn from fewer families. Tobacco and drink duties went up by 5 per cent above inflation. Taxpayers will each be sent annual details of the tax they pay and what it is spent on. The Office for Budget Responsibility had raised its expectations for growth in the economy a smidgeon, and the Chancellor expected to eliminate the national deficit by 2016-17.

HomeDavid Cameron, the Prime Minister, on an official visit to the United States, joined President Barack Obama in declaring that their relationship was not just special but ‘a unique and essential asset’. The Queen began her Diamond Jubilee tour of the United Kingdom at Leicester, with the Duke of Edinburgh and the Duchess of Cambridge. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, put his mind to new government bonds of 100 years or more. In the face of government proposals to introduce marriage between people of the same sex, the Archbishops of Westminster and Southwark wrote a joint letter read out in pulpits about the Catholic ‘duty to do all we can to ensure that the true meaning of marriage is not lost’.

HomeVince Cable, the Business Secretary, said in a leaked letter that the coalition lacks a ‘compelling vision’. He proposed that RBS be split up and half turned into ‘British business bank’. Earlier he had said that there was a ‘broad understanding’ in the coalition that, if the 50p tax rate was removed, it should be replaced by a tax on wealth such as a ‘mansion tax’. House prices fell by 0.5 per cent in February compared with January, according to a survey by the Halifax. Engelbert Humperdinck, aged 75, was chosen to represent the United Kingdom at the Eurovision Song Contest, to be held in Azerbaijan. Lord St John of Fawsley, the former Conservative MP sacked by Margaret Thatcher in 1981 after two years in the Cabinet, died, aged 82.

HomeNick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, lent his support to a series of amendments to the government’s Health and Social Care Bill that he said would limit its adoption of competition and privatisation. The British Medical Association said that two thirds of members had approved some form of action over plans to make them contribute more to their pensions. Len McCluskey, the General Secretary of Unite, called for industrial disruption during the Olympics. Police and bailiffs removed tents from a protest camp at St Paul’s Cathedral set up on 15 October. The BBC found that thousands of illegal immigrants from India were living in sheds, particularly in Slough and the London borough of Ealing.

HomeImmigration officials did not check the details of 500,000 people entering Britain by Eurostar trains, and left unread the biometric chip in passports of people entering the United Kingdom on 14,812 occasions in the first half of 2011, according to a report by John Vine, the independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency. Theresa May, the Home Secretary, told Parliament that the UK Border Agency would be split in two, with the UK Border Force becoming a separate law-enforcement body.

HomeBideford town council acted unlawfully by allowing prayers to be said at meetings, the High Court ruled. ‘A local authority has no power under section 111 of the Local Government Act 1972,’ Mr Justice Ouseley said, ‘to hold prayers as part of a formal local authority meeting’, but he rejected arguments based on the European Convention on Human Rights. Abu Qatada, the Islamist extremist cleric, was released on bail and confined to his home for 22 hours a day. Lord Carlile, the former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said: ‘We have to find a way of making him leave. There are legal, rule-of-law ways, of achieving that.

HomeA judge granted bail to Abu Qatada, once described by a Spanish judge as ‘Osama bin Laden’s right-hand man in Europe’, who was to be freed from Long Lartin prison and allowed to leave a fixed address in London for two one-hour periods a day, in order to take his youngest child to school. Ed Davey replaced his fellow Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne as Energy Secretary after Mr Huhne’s resignation to concentrate on defending himself against charges that he persuaded his ex-wife to accept his speeding points in 2003 to avoid a driving ban. The Metropolitan Police unlawfully failed to warn people that their telephones had been hacked by the News of the World, a judicial review, sought by Lord Prescott, ruled.

HomeFred Goodwin, the former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, was stripped of his knighthood by the Forfeiture Committee, which said he had ‘brought the honours system into disrepute’. Stephen Hester, the chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, turned down a £963,000 shares-only bonus payment in the face of ‘enormous political pressure’. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that the government was borrowing £2.9 billion less this year than expected and that there might be room for tax cuts in the budget next month. A man in Bournemouth found blue spheres of jelly an inch across on his lawn after a hailstorm.

Home The government was defeated in the Lords by 252 to 237 on an amendment by the Rt Rev John Packer, Bishop of Ripon and Leeds, to the Welfare Reform Bill, removing child benefit from the proposed welfare cap of £26,000 a year per household. Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, said in the Commons that he wanted to see legislation to give shareholders a binding (rather than the current advisory) vote on executive pay. MPs heard that the clock tower that houses Big Ben was leaning by 0.26 degrees to the north-west, which was just visible, but that it would not become unstable for more than 4,000 years.

HomeEd Balls, the shadow chancellor, commenting on the public sector wage freeze, said: ‘I can’t promise to reverse that now.’ Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, said it was ‘absolutely right’ to place employment before pay rises. But Len McCluskey of the Unite union called it a ‘Blairite coup’ and Mark Serwotka of the Public and Commercial Services Union, called it ‘hugely disappointing’. Inflation fell in December to 4.2 per cent from 4.8 per cent (by CPI) or to 4.8 per cent from 5.2 per cent (by RPI). Thieves dug a 100ft tunnel to a video shop in Manchester over the New Year, and got away with £6,000; a similar tunnel had been discovered at the same place in 2007.

HomeThe High Speed 2 rail link between London and Birmingham is to go ahead, Justine Greening, the Secretary of State for Transport, announced. The stretch to Birmingham would be completed by 2026, but a connection to Heathrow not until 2033, when the extensions to Manchester and Leeds would be finished. The cost of the project would be £32.7 billion. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said in a separate initiative that shareholders would be empowered to limit the pay of company executives. Bob Holness, one of the first presenters on Radio 2 from 1967 and later the presenter of the television game Blockbusters, died, aged 83. ••• Mr Cameron said he wanted Scotland to hold a binding referendum on independence earlier than 2014.

HomeGary Dobson and David Norris were found guilty, on the evidence of blood and fibre traces, of the murder of Stephen Lawrence at Eltham in 1993. Dobson had been acquitted of the crime in 1996, but the law changed to allow a new trial to consider new evidence. A 20-year-old man charged with murdering Anuj Bidve, an Indian student, by shooting him dead in Salford on Boxing Day, when asked to confirm his name in court, said that it was ‘Psycho Stapleton’. A man shot a woman, her sister and niece in a house in Peterlee, Co Durham, and then shot himself. One policeman was sacked and 154 faced disciplinary action over their use of Facebook between 2008 and 2010.

HomeThe Duke of Edinburgh, aged 90, left Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire four days after arriving by helicopter for an emergency operation to fit a stent in a blocked coronary artery. ‘It is tragedy that often draws out the most and the best from the human spirit,’ the Queen said in her Christmas broadcast, recorded earlier. In an interview with RTE, David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that the Queen’s visit to Ireland in May had been a ‘game-changer’ in Anglo-Irish relations. The body of Christopher Hitchens, who died aged 62, was donated for medical research. Kauto Star won an unprecedented fifth King George VI Chase at Kempton. ••• Mr Cameron said that he supported minimum pricing for alcohol.

JanuaryThe government introduced a Health Bill to give control of the NHS budget to GPs. Andy Coulson resigned as head of communications at Downing Street. Prisoners set Ford open prison on fire. Gerry Rafferty, the singer, died, aged 63. Nigel Pargetter fell to his death from the roof at Lower Loxley. A fox weighing 26.5lb, suspected of having killed a cat, was trapped at Maidstone. President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia in the face of a popular uprising. Crowds rioted in Cairo. Floods drove people from their homes in Sri Lanka, Brazil and Australia. Gabrielle Giffords, a Democratic congresswoman, was wounded by a shot to the head at Tucson, Arizona. Three thousand dead blackbirds fell on the city of Beebe, Arkansas. FebruaryThe government dropped plans to sell off woodland.

HomeDavid Cameron, the Prime Minister, said before an EU summit on the eurozone debt crisis that he would not agree to any treaty change ‘that fails to protect our interests’. Downing Street rejected suggestions by Iain Duncan Smith that a referendum on the EU would be made necessary by the changes proposed. Sir Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, said that the crisis posed an ‘exceptionally threatening environment’ for British banks and that they should increase their capital reserves in preference to paying dividends or bonuses.

HomePublic borrowing will exceed previous forecasts by £5 billion this year, £19 billion next year and £30 billion in 2013-14, George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said in an Autumn Statement delivered under dark clouds. The ratio of debt to GDP would rise to a peak of 78 per cent in 2014-15. He noted that the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) had revised forecasts for growth this year to 0.9 per cent (from the 1.7 per cent predicted in March), and for next year to 0.7 per cent. There would be a 1 per cent cap on public sector pay rises, he said. The 3p rise in fuel duty due in January was cancelled, but a 3p rise would come in next August.

HomeDavid Cameron, the Prime Minister, said: ‘Getting debt under control is proving harder than anyone envisaged.’ In a speech to the Confederation of British Industry he blamed in part ‘paralysis in the eurozone’. His words came a week before the Chancellor was due to make his autumn statement, and the Office for Budget Responsibility to publish projections for the public deficit, which looked most unlikely to be expunged by the end of this parliament. Mr Cameron had earlier held talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and was thought to have discussed a ‘narrow’ amendment to the Lisbon Treaty that would not be subject to a referendum in Britain.