Portrait of the Week – 30 October 2004

An order laid before Parliament by Mr David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, will enable juries to be told of defendants’ previous convictions if they touch on ‘an important matter in issue’, such as ‘a propensity to commit offences of the kind’ alleged. The Lords voted 322 to 72 to reinstate the government’s original Bill on hunting, which the Commons had amended. The government acquiesced in the removal of Britain’s veto on European legislation about immigration and asylum, as adumbrated in the Amsterdam Treaty of 1999. Mr Denis MacShane, the European affairs minister, visited Kosovo to take Serbs to task for turning a deaf ear to his instructions not to boycott elections for the province’s assembly. The Cabinet was divided over the government Bill to allow the building of casinos and one-armed bandit palaces in Britain at the behest of American companies. The London stock exchange braced itself to resist a merger attempt by the Deutsche Börse.