Portrait of the week | 15 January 2011

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David Chaytor, the Labour MP for Bury North from 1997 to 2010, was sentenced to 18 months for false accounting under the Theft Act 1968 regarding his claims for parliamentary expenses. Eric Illsley, the Labour MP for Barnsley, who was re-elected last May with a majority of 11,000, was convicted of fraudulently claiming more than £14,000 in parliamentary expenses. A sixth-former was jailed for 32 months after admitting throwing an empty fire-extinguisher from the seventh floor of the Millbank building during student protests last November. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, declared his support for ‘alarm-clock Britain’. Stuart Wheeler, who gave £5 million to the Conservative party in 2001, joined Ukip as its treasurer.

To mark the visit to Downing Street of Li Keqiang, who is expected to be the premier of China in two years’ time, British and Chinese firms signed commercial agreements worth perhaps £2.6 billion. Two giant pandas are to be sent to Edinburgh Zoo and Scotland signed a deal to provide China with technology for the production of energy from refuse.