Portrait of the week | 18 June 2011

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The government accepted the recommendations of the NHS Future Forum, which had spent two months reviewing the government’s plans for reforming the National Health Service. The Health Secretary is to remain responsible for the service; private companies are to be prevented from cherry-picking; the regulator, Monitor, will not be required to promote competition; hospital doctors and nurses will be included in the task of commissioning and the 2013 deadline for GPs to form consortiums will be dropped. Southern Cross, the financially beleaguered company that runs homes for 31,000 old people, met the many landlords of the properties it leases in an attempt to carry on. After a summit in London, Britain pledged £814 million to vaccinate children in poor countries against diseases causing pneumonia and diarrhoea; among other pledges, Bill Gates gave $1 billion and Norway $677 million. A 56-year-old woman from Nottingham decided to donate her womb for transplant into her daughter.

Leaked documents published by the Daily Telegraph showed the involvement of Ed Balls and Ed Miliband in a plot to overthrow Tony Blair as leader of the Labour party soon after the 2005 general election, in favour of Gordon Brown. The documents gave a different account from those given publicly by Mr Balls, who last year dismissed claims he was disloyal to Mr Blair as ‘balderdash’. In a speech on future policy, Ed Miliband said that those who work should be given priority for council houses. Trains from Marylebone were delayed after one hit a cow near High Wycombe.

George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, outlined in his Mansion House speech plans to separate banks’ retail business from their riskier investment arms. Schoolteachers are to strike on 30 June. Government attempts to force weekly collections from dustbins were dropped.