Portrait of the week | 18 October 2003

At a specially reconvened hearing of the Hutton inquiry into circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly, the expert on Iraqi weapons, Sir Kevin Tebbit, the permanent secretary at the Ministry of Defence, said that Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, had chaired the meeting that agreed a ‘change of stance’, under which officials would confirm the scientist’s identity as the man who illicitly briefed Mr Andrew Gilligan, a BBC radio correspondent, if his name was put to them by reporters. Lord Hutton said that his report ‘might not be delivered and published before the New Year’. Mr Blair held talks at Downing Street with Mr Bertie Ahern, the Taoiseach of Ireland; the leaders of Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionists; and Mr Richard Haass, President George Bush’s special adviser on Northern Ireland; an aim was to arrange elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly, which has been suspended for a year. Mr Michael Crick, a television journalist, handed over to Sir Philip Mawer, the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, a dossier alleging that Mr Iain Duncan Smith, the leader of the Conservative party, improperly employed his wife as a secretary using an allowance from public funds; Sir Philip said he would make a full inquiry. Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, met the primates of 38 Anglican provinces at Lambeth Palace in an effort to stop a schism in the Anglican Communion over the ordination of practising homosexuals. Mr Callum McCarthy, the new chairman of the Financial Services Authority, said in his first speech that implementing European financial market regulation would bring ‘severe stress’ to the City of London over the coming years. Blood supplies in Scotland have reached dangerously low levels and planned operations might have to be cancelled, according to the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service. D.B.C.