Portrait of the week

The government was defeated in the House of Lords by 249 to 119 when a Liberal Democrat amendment to the Prevention of Terrorism Bill was passed — to apply the prior sanction of a judge rather than the say-so of a home secretary to all proposed control orders, not merely those that stipulated house arrest. The next day five votes in the Lords went against the government; 24 Labour peers voted against their party when a ‘sunset clause’ was added to the Bill. Among those who voted against the government were Lord Irvine, the former Labour Lord Chancellor, and Lord Condon, a former commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

The government did a good deal of nodding and winking to the opposition over its rushed legislation to provide for house arrest without trial and other controls on anyone suspected of connections with terrorism. Mr Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, conceded that judges should decide if suspects were to be put under house arrest, but police should have powers to hold them in the meantime. The government majority was reduced to 14 in a Commons vote. Sajid Badat, 25, from Gloucester, was convicted, after pleading guilty, of conspiring with Richard Reid, the attempted ‘shoe-bomber’ jailed in America, to destroy aircraft in December 2001; Badat dismantled his own shoe-bomb and was arrested in November 2003.

Mr Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, attempted to rush through Parliament legislation to put people suspected of terrorism under house arrest without trial. Mr Michael McDowell, the Irish justice minister, said that leaders of Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland were also members of the Irish Republican Army’s seven-man Army Council: ‘We’re talking about Martin McGuinness, Gerry Adams, Martin Ferris and others,’ he said. All three men denied the accusation. Mr Adams had earlier nuanced his opinion that the IRA was not involved in December’s £26.5 million raid on the Northern Bank in Belfast, saying, ‘The IRA has said it was not and I believe them, but maybe I’m wrong.

The Labour party made six so-called pledges: ‘Your family better off. Your child achieving more. Your children with the best start. Your family treated better and faster. Your community safer. Your country’s borders protected.’ Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, made a speech at a party conference at Gateshead in which he said his relationship with the electorate was like that of a man going through a bad patch in his marriage during which crockery is thrown at him; ‘I’m back and it feels good,’ he added. The Prince of Wales is to marry Mrs Camilla Parker Bowles on 8 April in a civil ceremony at Windsor Castle, to be followed by a service of prayer and dedication, led by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Mr Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, proposed a points system, measuring desirable skills and suchlike qualities, to determine which immigrants from outside the European Community would be allowed to settle permanently in Britain. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission (Siac) refused to return a man with alleged al-Qa’eda links to Belmarsh prison, where he had been driven mad; the Siac judge ruled that the Home Secretary had failed to prove ‘to the necessary standard’ his allegation that the man, known as G, had received two unidentified visitors at his home. Mr Michael Howard, the leader of the Conservative party, proposed that prisoners should serve the whole of a minimum term specified by the courts.

Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, was reported to have warned ministers that plans to allow the Home Secretary to put suspected terrorists under house arrest were likely to be challenged and ruled illegal by the courts. A man known as ‘C’, suspected of terrorist activity, was suddenly released; another man, whom imprisonment had made increasingly mad, was released on bail. Mr Ken Macdonald, the Director of Public Prosecutions, issued advice on how to deal with burglars; they could be killed, he said, as long as it was done ‘honestly and instinctively’. The Association of British Insurers said that a third of the housing announced by Mr John Prescott, the Deputy Prime Minister, was located on flood plains where the risk was ‘unacceptably high’.

The government proposed that foreigners suspected of terrorism and held illegally at Belmarsh prison should be let out but somehow put under restriction. Four British citizens held in America’s prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba were flown home and arrested. Mr Michael Howard, the leader of the Conservative party, said he sought a substantial reduction in immigration, which has averaged 157,000 a year under Labour; if the Tories won the election they would withdraw Britain from the 1951 UN convention on refugees. But European Union officials said that EU law prohibited Britain from setting a quota for refugees.

The Conservatives published plans for spending if they were to win the next election. Presuming savings proposed by Sir Peter Gershon’s report for the Treasury, and incorporating new savings devised for them by Mr David James, they said they could reduce government spending by £35 billion, partly by cutting 235,000 Civil Service posts. Of this, £23 billion would be spent on extra services, principally health and education, £8 billion would fill the ‘black hole’ (borrowing) incurred by Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and £4 billion would pay for tax cuts; tax revenues for the current year are expected by the government to be about £450 billion.

Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, was jolly annoyed when Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, decided not to step down in his favour last year after all, according to a new book by Mr Robert Peston; ‘There is nothing that you could say to me now that I could ever believe,’ Mr Brown reportedly said to Mr Blair. During a heated meeting between Labour backbenchers — displeased with the wrangling — and Mr Blair and Mr Brown, Lord Campbell-Savours asked Mr Brown either to deny the attributed quotation or rescind it, lest the Tories use it in the election campaign. The confirmed number of British people killed by the great wave in the Indian Ocean was 51, with 416 presumed dead and 701 unaccounted for.

To relieve the survivors of the destructive wave in the Indian Ocean, British people donated £60 million in a week to the disaster emergency committee co-ordinated by the main aid charities. The Queen, who herself gave a substantial donation, said: ‘I have been impressed by the willingness of people in Britain to give generously.’ Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, remained on a seaside holiday in Egypt, which some people criticised on various grounds. ‘At first it seemed a terrible disaster,’ he said, ‘but I think as the days have gone on people have recognised it as a global disaster.’ He returned to a domestic manifesto wrangle with Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

JANUARY Lord Hutton’s report declared that the government was not ‘dishonourable, underhand or duplicitous’. Mr Mikhail Saakashvili, who had led popular demonstrations in Georgia against Mr Eduard Shevardnadze, won the presidential elections. Hundreds of reformist candidates were banned from standing in the Iranian elections. Hope was given up of hearing any signal from Beagle 2, the British craft sent to Mars. Dr Harold Shipman, who had murdered at least 215 patients, was found hanged in his prison cell. Parmalat, the Italian food group, was exposed in a vast fraud. The dollar weakened against the euro. Police in Madhya Pradesh were paid a bonus of 35p a month to grow moustaches to increase their authority.

Lord Butler of Brockwell, who had headed the inquiry into intelligence about Iraq, accused Mr Tony Blair’s administration of ‘bad government’, being unchecked by Parliament and free to bring in a ‘huge number of extremely bad Bills, a huge amount of regulation and to do whatever it likes’ with an eye to the next day’s headlines. The Home Secretary, David Blunkett, denied a fresh allegation that he had helped fast-track a tourist visa to Austria for his ex-lover’s nanny, Leoncia Casalme.

The Army Board approved a scheme to amalgamate all 19 single-battalion regiments into ‘super regiments’. The BBC is to get rid of 3,000 staff in three years to save £320 million. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution called for a ban on fishing in a third of British waters. The Department of Health told Britain’s 1,184 hospitals how to clean floors and lavatories in an attempt to reduce infection by Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, which kills thousands a year. Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, demanded in a five-year plan that the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts should convict, fine or caution 1.

Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, juggled his black hole and his Golden Rule in a pre-Budget statement. Mr Oliver Letwin, the shadow Chancellor, said he would ‘expect’ the Tories to make at least ‘one specific tax pledge that we will fulfil in the first Budget’. Mr Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the political face of the Irish Republican Army, held talks with Mr Hugh Orde, the chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland at No. 10 Downing Street. The Revd Ian Paisley, the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, met General John de Chastelain, head of the international decommissioning body, and the next day met Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister.

In the Queen’s Speech, the government announced 32 Bills: one to impose ‘voluntary’ identity cards and then compulsory cards; another to create a Serious Organised Crime Agency; a Counter-Terrorist Bill that might allow trial without jury and the admittance of evidence from tapped telephones; a Discrimination Bill to extend the rights of disabled people, and an Equality Bill to criminalise rudeness about religious beliefs, both to be enforced by a Commission for Equality and Human Rights. The Prince of Wales wrote in a memorandum about a woman who then went to an employment tribunal: ‘What is wrong with everyone nowadays? Why do they all seem to think they are qualified to do things far beyond their actual capacities?

A white paper proposed a ban on smoking in restaurants and pubs that serve hot food. It also proposed the banning of television advertisements for ‘unhealthy’ food before 9 p.m., but this would be ‘ineffective and disproportionate’ according to the television regulators, Ofcom. The Hunting Bill was amended in the Lords to restore the government’s original provisions for the licensing of hunts; when it returned to the Commons the amended Bill was defeated by 321 to 204.

The Saturday 17.35 Paddington to Plymouth train, operated by First Great Western, was derailed when it hit a car on a level crossing near Ufton, just before Aldermaston, Berkshire; the car driver and train driver and five passengers were killed and 150 of the 300 aboard injured. Three soldiers of the Black Watch were killed in a suicide bombing ambush 30 miles south-west of Baghdad, and another soldier in the regiment was killed later. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, flew off eagerly to Washington for talks with President George Bush.

The people of the north-east of England voted in a referendum on whether they wanted a regional assembly; they didn’t. Forty-seven Labour rebels voted for a complete ban on parents’ smacking when the Commons passed a Bill limiting chastisement of children. Mrs Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, told the Commons during the debate on the gambling Bill, ‘There will be no new casinos if local people don’t want new casinos.’ About 160 Crown post offices in high-street sites could be closed or sold off because the Royal Mail lost £70 million on them last year. The borough of Macclesfield was found to have the lowest concentration of cinemas, theatres and libraries in Britain.

An order laid before Parliament by Mr David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, will enable juries to be told of defendants’ previous convictions if they touch on ‘an important matter in issue’, such as ‘a propensity to commit offences of the kind’ alleged. The Lords voted 322 to 72 to reinstate the government’s original Bill on hunting, which the Commons had amended. The government acquiesced in the removal of Britain’s veto on European legislation about immigration and asylum, as adumbrated in the Amsterdam Treaty of 1999. Mr Denis MacShane, the European affairs minister, visited Kosovo to take Serbs to task for turning a deaf ear to his instructions not to boycott elections for the province’s assembly.

The United States asked for British forces to be sent from the south of Iraq around Basra to positions further north to cover for American troops required to attack Fallujah, where insurgents have been in control; the government decided to send soldiers of the Black Watch. They would come under American command but retain British rules of engagement. Abu Hamza al-Masri, the well-known hook-handed Muslim cleric, was taken to Belmarsh magistrates’ court to answer ten charges of soliciting or encouraging the murder of others, ‘namely a person or persons who did not believe in the Islamic faith’.