Portrait of the week | 21 June 2018

Home

Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said that spending on NHS England would increase by £20 billion a year by 2023. Some of the money would come from economic growth and a ‘Brexit dividend’, but more would come from taxes to be announced by the Chancellor at the next budget. Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said that the divorce settlement with the EU and Britain’s commitments to replace EU funding had already accounted for ‘all of our EU contributions’ for the next few years. The government said the use of medicinal cannabis was to be reviewed. The announcement followed publicity for Charlotte Caldwell, whose son Billy has severe epilepsy, treated by cannabis oil, new supplies of which were confiscated when she tried to bring them into Britain from Canada. Lord Hague, a former leader of the Conservative party, wrote in the Daily Telegraph that the war on cannabis as a recreational drug had been ‘irreversibly lost’ and so a change of policy was needed.