Portrait of the Week - 22 October 2011

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After the resignation of Liam Fox as Defence Secretary, a report by Sir Gus O’Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, found that there had been a ‘clear breach’ of the ministerial code in his working relationship with Adam Werritty, who had accompanied him on 18 foreign trips. Dr Fox, he said, had been warned about Mr Werritty’s role, although Dr Fox had not benefited financially and Mr Werritty was not a lobbyist, he found. Philip Hammond, the Transport Secretary, replaced Dr Fox and Justine Greening replaced Mr Hammond. Canon Giles Fraser, the Canon Chancellor of St Paul’s Cathedral, requested police on its steps confronting anti-capitalist demonstrators to leave; about 150 tents were pitched around the cathedral. Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice, said that, after the ‘utterly shocking’ riots of August, ‘severe sentences, intended to provide both punishment and deterrence, must follow — it is very simple’; he dismissed seven appeals, including two who planned a riot on Facebook. Julian Barnes won the Man Booker prize with The Sense of an Ending.

• The annual rate of inflation, measured by the Consumer Prices Index, rose from 4.5 per cent a month earlier to 5.2 per cent, its highest since March 1992. As measured by the Retail Prices Index it rose to 5.6 per cent from 5.2. Sir Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, said that ‘a return to normality’ would take longer because of the problems in the eurozone. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, and Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, held a one-day ‘summit’ with six energy companies and the regulator Ofgem, which said that energy suppliers now made £125 a year from each customer; in June the margin was said to be £15. The London boroughs of Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith & Fulham decided to share a chief executive to save money.