Portrait of the week | 4 December 2014

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The government spent days announcing how the Autumn Statement would allocate funds. ‘Frontline’ parts of the National Health Service would get an extra £2 billion for the time being, £750 million of it diverted from elsewhere in the Department of Health budget. Another £1.1 billion from bankers’ fines would go to support GPs. Labour said it would give the NHS twice as much. Out of the £15 billion already set aside by the government for roads, a tunnel would be built for the A303 past Stonehenge. Of £2.3 billion (over six years) earmarked for flood prevention, only £4.3 million was set aside for the Somerset Levels, but £196 million for the Thames estuary. An intention to build 55,000 new homes a year until 2020 was announced, including a new garden city of 13,000 houses at Bicester, Oxfordshire. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had to admit that he had missed the target announced in 2010 of eliminating the nation’s annual deficit by next April, since annual borrowing would hardly come in at less than last year’s £97.5