Portrait of the Week – 18 December 2004

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. Dame Janet Smith, in a 1,300-word report, her fifth on the mass murderer Dr Harold Shipman, blamed the General Medical Council for perpetuating the ‘mutual self-interest’ of doctors, and recommended the construction of a national database about every doctor in Britain. Lord Winston said that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority should be abolished because it was ‘not seen to be a very good system’. Ofsted, the education regulator, said that 10,000 schoolchildren had gone missing from official records.