Portrait of the week | 16 April 2014

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Nigel Evans, who had resigned as deputy speaker before being cleared of a bundle of rape and sexual assault charges against men, questioned the right of the Crown Prosecution Service to pursue cases that were ‘decades’ old and said that people should not have to spend their life savings defending themselves. Sajid Javid was appointed Culture Secretary, with additional responsibility for equalities, while Nicky Morgan was made women’s minister, with the right to sit in the cabinet when she is sent for. Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Democrat party, said that a higher council-tax band on houses worth more than £2 million, proposed by Danny Alexander, the Lib Dem Chief Secretary to the Treasury, instead of a so-called mansion tax, would be ‘fully deliverable’. He also said that money from a £2.4 billion fund would go to encourage house-building, with the founding of up to three garden cities, each of more than 15,000 houses.