Portrait of the Week – 20 November 2004

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. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said in a speech at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet in London that Europe and America must co-operate to find peace in the Middle East: ‘It is not a sensible or intelligent response for us in Europe to ridicule American arguments and parody their political leadership,’ he said. Three days earlier he had been the first foreign head of government to be invited to Washington since Mr George Bush’s re-election as President. A video emerged of abductors shooting dead the aid worker Margaret Hassan. Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, drew attention to a speech he was making in Brussels, complaining that European governments, apart from Britain’s, favoured their own nation’s companies when awarding contracts. The government recognised a ceasefire by the Ulster Defence Association after it undertook to end all violence and work towards disarmament. Senior members of the parliamentary Conservative party sought a way of choosing leaders in future without being bound by the opinion of party members at large. Mr Boris Johnson was sacked as opposition spokesman on the arts by Mr Michael Howard, the party leader. Lord Black of Crossharbour, the former chairman of the Telegraph Group, was accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States of ‘a fraudulent and deceptive scheme to divert cash’; in an action that is not a criminal prosecution, it sought to force him to ‘disgorge any ill-gotten gains’.