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David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that English local authorities would be allowed to receive all the business rates collected from shale gas schemes, not just the 50 per cent they’d expect. Total, a French company, said it would invest about £30 million in drilling two exploratory wells in Lincolnshire. To head off higher borrowing rates, the government announced that ‘in the event of Scottish independence from the United Kingdom, the continuing UK government would in all circumstances honour the contractual terms of the debt issued by the UK government’. The annual rate of inflation, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index, met the target set by the government for the first time since November 2009, when it fell to 2 per cent (from 2.1 the month before), but, measured by the Retail Prices Index, it rose from 2.6 to 2.7 per cent. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that the EU was falling behind India and China. The Most Revd Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, is among 19 cardinals to be created on 22 February.
The Metropolitan Police announced that from April its firearms officers would wear video cameras. This followed the findings by the jury in the inquest of the drug gangster Mark Duggan, that he was lawfully shot dead by police in August 2011. The killing had been followed by riots all over London, and the death of five people; the verdict was met only by shouting and threats. PC Keith Wallis of the Metropolitan Police, pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to misconduct in public office, after falsely claiming to have witnessed a row between Andrew Mitchell, then a Cabinet minister, and police in Downing Street in September 2012. Mr Mitchell, who lost his position, denied police claims that he had called them ‘plebs’.
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