Portrait of the week | 24 October 2013

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The government agreed a guaranteed price for electricity that persuaded a consortium led by the French-owned EDF Energy and including Chinese investors to agree to build the Hinkley Point C power station in Somerset. The strike price agreed was £92.50 per megawatt hour (compared with a current wholesale price of £45). Following an energy price rise by SSE of 8.2 per cent, British Gas said it was to raise prices by 9.2 per cent and NPower by 10.4 per cent. David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that this was ‘extremely disappointing news’. Sir John Major, a former prime minister, helpfully suggested a windfall tax on energy profits. The Daily Mirror suggested that Mr Cameron was advising people to wear jumpers. Downing Street issued a statement: ‘It is entirely false to suggest the Prime Minister would advise people they should wear jumpers to stay warm.’ A small tornado damaged 100 houses on Hayling Island, Hampshire.

Jeremy Hunt, the Health Secretary, said that the National Health Service could collect an extra £500 million a year from foreign visitors. Teaching at Al-Madinah free school in Derby was found to be inadequate by an Ofsted inspection, although there was ‘no evidence during the inspection of boys and girls being treated unequally’. Elizabeth Truss, the Conservative education minister, disagreed with Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, when he said free schools should employ only qualified teachers and adhere to the national curriculum. The Dean Academy, in the Forest of Dean, closed after an outbreak of venomous false widow spiders.

At a conference in London, Britain and the United States urged Syria’s moderate opposition to attend talks in Geneva next month. The Ministry of Defence is to set up a Joint Cyber Reserve Unit of army and reservist computer experts.