Portrait of the Week – 5 November 2005

Mr David Blunkett resigned as the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions after it was revealed that he had taken a directorship in a DNA-testing company called DNA Bioscience, after resigning from his previous Cabinet post, without consulting the independent Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, as the ministerial code of practice stipulates. He had sold some shares he’d bought in the company, saying he wanted ‘to protect family and friends from further intrusion’. After a delay caused by a rift in the Cabinet, the government announced a Bill to criminalise tobacco-smoking in enclosed public spaces, apart from pubs not selling food and private clubs. Mrs Patricia Hewitt, the Secretary of State for Health, said it would be ‘only a matter of time’ before a complete ban on smoking was enforced. The government then threatened to make illegal the consumption of alcohol on buses and trains. O2, the mobile telephone company, agreed to a takeover by the Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica for £17.7