Portrait of the week | 15 January 2011

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David Chaytor, the Labour MP for Bury North from 1997 to 2010, was sentenced to 18 months for false accounting under the Theft Act 1968 regarding his claims for parliamentary expenses. Eric Illsley, the Labour MP for Barnsley, who was re-elected last May with a majority of 11,000, was convicted of fraudulently claiming more than £14,000 in parliamentary expenses. A sixth-former was jailed for 32 months after admitting throwing an empty fire-extinguisher from the seventh floor of the Millbank building during student protests last November. Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, declared his support for ‘alarm-clock Britain’. Stuart Wheeler, who gave £5 million to the Conservative party in 2001, joined Ukip as its treasurer.

To mark the visit to Downing Street of Li Keqiang, who is expected to be the premier of China in two years’ time, British and Chinese firms signed commercial agreements worth perhaps £2.6 billion. Two giant pandas are to be sent to Edinburgh Zoo and Scotland signed a deal to provide China with technology for the production of energy from refuse. Virgin Atlantic withheld fees from BAA until the airport operator finishes its inquiry in March into what went wrong at Heathrow in December, when thousands of flights were grounded by snow, costing BAA £19 million, it said. Rochdale Council has bought 3,000 tons of salt from Peru, 6,000 miles away, though it is only 45 miles from Britain’s biggest salt mine at Winsford, Cheshire.

The European Union Bill returned to the Commons amid doubts that it would provide any certainty of a referendum over future treaties. The government tabled amendments to the Postal Services Bill to preserve the Queen’s head on stamps after privatisation of Royal Mail. Jack Straw, the MP for Blackburn and a former home secretary, said: ‘There is a specific problem which involves Pakistani heritage men… who target vulnerable young white girls.’