Portrait of the Week – 29 January 2005

The government proposed that foreigners suspected of terrorism and held illegally at Belmarsh prison should be let out but somehow put under restriction. Four British citizens held in America’s prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba were flown home and arrested. Mr Michael Howard, the leader of the Conservative party, said he sought a substantial reduction in immigration, which has averaged 157,000 a year under Labour; if the Tories won the election they would withdraw Britain from the 1951 UN convention on refugees. But European Union officials said that EU law prohibited Britain from setting a quota for refugees. The government revealed the wording of a referendum to be held, probably in 2006: ‘Should the United Kingdom approve the treaty establishing a constitution for the European Union?’ Mr William Hague launched an anti-slavery campaign by pointing out that there are an estimated 27 million slaves alive today, more than all the people sold from Africa in the transatlantic slave trade. Oxford University is to admit fewer British undergraduates, on whom it loses money each year, and will vigorously recruit overseas students, who pay for courses in full, according to plans by Dr John Hood, its new vice-chancellor. Violent crimes against the person in Britain rose by 7 per cent over the year before. The High Court was asked to rule if the Parliament Act 1949 was valid, since it had been invoked to ban hunting. Miss Ruth Kelly, the Secretary of State for Education, said that she received ‘spiritual guidance’ from the Catholic association Opus Dei. Dame Miriam Rothschild, the naturalist whose Catalogue Rothschild Collection of Fleas ran to six volumes, died, aged 96. The Royal Mail is to issue stamps in September featuring Emmerdale, the television soap opera. The consumption of vegetables has fallen by 2 per cent since the government campaign began in 2000 to encourage their consumption.