Portrait of the Week – 16 October 2004

Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, coined the phrase ‘opportunity society’ to describe his objective in reforming social services and policing; National Health Service spending on independent providers of diagnosis and treatment would rise ‘significantly’, and specialist schools would become ‘near universal’. He also said, ‘We must change the culture that can write people off at 65,’ by which he meant people would have to work after 65 because of poor pension provisions. Mr Alan Johnson, the new Secretary of State for Pensions, said in the Commons, ‘Means testing is a crucial part of our policy.’ Mr Adair Turner’s government-appointed Pensions Commission revealed that the gap between what people needed to save for retirement and what they are saving amounted to £57 billion. It said an unpalatable choice would be to raise taxes, but Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, jumped in two days before the report to say he would not do that. Inflation and unemployment fell a little. Mr Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, said, ‘The combination of low and stable inflation and continuously falling unemployment must come to an end at some point.’ Sainsbury’s warned shareholders that its underlying profits for the past six months would be between £125 million and £135 million, down from £366 million last year. Marks & Spencer food sales fell. Royal & Sun Alliance insurance said it would save £10 million a year by transferring 1,100 call-centre jobs to Bangalore. The British Pregnancy Advisory Service was reported regularly to refer women more than 24 weeks pregnant to a clinic in Barcelona for abortions, although abortion of healthy foetuses of that age is illegal in Spain. The Canadian submarine Chicoutimi, sold by Britain in 1998 and on its maiden voyage after a refit, reached Faslane after a fire that killed an officer and left the craft drifting in the stormy Atlantic.