Portrait of the week | 18 October 2012

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Theresa May, the Home Secretary, blocked the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the United States, where he is suspected of having hacked into government computers. She told the Commons there was no doubt he had Asperger’s syndrome and suffered from depressive illness, and that there was a risk of suicide. Dominic Grieve, the Attorney General, blocked the release of private letters that the Prince of Wales had sent to seven government departments. The Territorial Army would be renamed the Army Reserve and become an ‘integral part’ of the Army, Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary said. Five Royal Marines were charged with murder over an incident in Afghanistan in 2011 that concerned an insurgent but no civilians. The annual inflation rate, measured by the Consumer Prices Index, fell to 2.2 per cent in September, from 2.5 per cent in August. British Gas put up prices by 6 per cent.

Alex Salmond, the First Minister of Scotland, had his way in giving 16-year-olds the right to vote in a referendum on Scottish independence, but only one question will be put on the ballot, to be held in 2014. Banco Santander unexpectedly pulled out of a £1.65 billion deal to buy 316 branches of Royal Bank of Scotland as part of a European Union ruling on state bailouts. Virgin Money contacted RBS about the possibility of taking over the branches. Virgin Trains was asked to continue to run services on the West Coast Mainline for another nine months while the decision on the franchise to operate it is re-run. Tourism officials in Suffolk decided to brand it ‘The Curious County’.

Hilary Mantel won the Man Booker prize for the second time with the second book in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy. A Marie Stopes clinic was due to open in Belfast and make abortions available within the law, which in Northern Ireland does not include the 1967 Act.