The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 27 June 2013

issue 29 June 2013

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George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, outlined cuts of £11.5 billion from departmental spending for the tax-year beginning in 2015. David Gauke, a Treasury minister, gave a ‘firm commitment’ in a letter to backbenchers to introduce a transferable tax allowance of £750 between spouses and civil partners paying tax at the basic rate. This would benefit them by £150 a year at most, and not before the next election. Sir Mervyn King, retiring after ten years as governor of the Bank of England, was to be created a life peer. Mark Harper, the minister for immigration, broke his foot by falling off a table while dancing with his wife in a bar in Soho.

The Care Quality Commission named people alleged to have taken part in suppressing a report on its failings over the inspection of Furness General Hospital, where numbers of babies and mothers had died from 2008 onwards.

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