Portrait of the week | 18 July 2013

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Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, put into ‘special measures’ 11 hospitals among the 14 with the worst death rates examined in an inquiry by Professor Sir Bruce Keogh. Professor Sir Brian Jarman, a contributor to the report, said: ‘If you don’t have enough trained nurses, as with doctors, you get higher death rates.’ The government announced that the Liverpool Care Pathway (for the dying) would be phased out after a review headed by Lady Neuberger found that the strategy, which can entail withdrawal of food and drink, was being ‘misused’. The government decided not to press ahead with legislation to impose plain packaging for cigarettes. The BBC announced that it had so far spent £4.9 million on three inquiries set up in the wake of the Jimmy Savile scandal. England won the first Ashes Test by 14 runs. In Australia’s first innings, Ashton Agar, the 11th man, scored 98.

A cap of £26,000 was imposed on the total amount of benefits that non-working people aged 16 to 64 could receive in England, Scotland and Wales. Unemployment fell by 57,000 to 2.51 million. The rate of inflation, as measured by the Consumer Prices Index rose to 2.9 per cent in June, from 2.7 per cent in May; as measured by the Retail Prices Index, it rose to 3.3 per cent from 3.1 per cent. Britain had 2,346 bankers earning more than a million euros in 2011, compared with 739 in the rest of the European Union, according to the European Banking Authority. Alan Whicker, the television journalist, died, aged 87 by his own account. An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 787 Dreamliner caught fire at Heathrow airport while no one was aboard. Heathrow  announced details of its plan for a third runway.