Portrait of the week | 22 May 2010

George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said he would hold an emergency Budget on 22 June. He announced the setting up of an Office for Budget Responsibility under Sir Alan Budd, one of the original members of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee in 1997. The office would publish its first economic and fiscal forecasts before the Budget. In the meantime the government looked for £6 billion of savings to make this year. Mr David Cameron, the Prime Minister, sought, as an adviser on poverty, Mr Frank Field, the Labour MP asked in 1997 to ‘think the unthinkable’ about welfare reform and sacked as a minister when he did so. MPs reappointed Mr John Bercow as Speaker. Mr David Miliband, the former foreign secretary, stood as a candidate for the leadership of the Labour party. ‘New Labour is not new any more,’ he said. ‘What counts is next Labour.’ His younger brother, Mr Ed Miliband, became his first rival. The rate of inflation measured by the Consumer Prices Index rose to 3.7 per cent, and, by the Retail Prices Index, to 5.3 per cent, its highest for 19 years. Senior civil servants had, it emerged, demanded ‘letters of instruction’ from ministers during the last months of the Labour government to authorise decisions on items of high public expenditure. Mr David Laws, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, said that he found a letter on his desk from his predecessor, Mr Liam Byrne, reading: ‘Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left.’ Someone from Britain won a lottery prize of £84.4 million, the highest sum ever.