Portrait of the Week – 19 March 2005

In a widely leaked tinkering Budget, Mr Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, raised the threshold for stamp duty to be payable on houses from £60,000 to £120,000 and the threshold on inheritance tax from £260,000 to £275,000; slightly increased pensions; deferred petrol duty rises until September; increased excise on cigarettes by 7p a packet ‘for health reasons’; and announced plans for stem-cell experiments and a memorial to the Queen Mother in the Mall. A Downing Street official said that Mr Brown’s part in the election campaign would be equal to that of Mr Alan Milburn’s, if not more important. The five sisters and the fiancée of Robert McCartney, murdered by Irish Republican Army men in Belfast in February, visited Mr George Bush, the President of the United States, in Washington, taking with them a dossier naming 12 men they said were involved. Mr Martin McGuinness, the chief negotiator of Sinn Fein, in response to the sisters’ plans to stand against Sinn Fein candidates in the general election, said, ‘The McCartneys need to be very careful.’ Later he denied this was a threat, saying, ‘It was intended to be a word of friendly advice from someone who is 100 per cent behind their campaign for truth and justice.’ Members of the Commons defence committee concluded that officers were responsible for some of the bullying at the army’s Deepcut training base in Surrey, where four soldiers had been found dead with bullet wounds. After 30 hours in continuous session the Commons and Lords voted for a much amended Prevention of Terrorism Bill, which had been passed from one house to the other nine times before gaining the royal assent. The government conceded a review of the law next year. Four days later the Lords twice defeated the government to stipulate that the post of Lord Chancellor should continue to be held by a member of the House of Lords and by a lawyer.