Portrait of the week | 28 February 2004

Mr David Blunkett, the

Home Secretary, proposed internment without trial for those suspected of terrorist offences, and other measures such as wider telephone-tapping. The government said that migrants from countries joining the European Union on 1 May will not be able to claim some benefits until they have worked in Britain for a year. Mr Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, said: ‘If they can’t support themselves, they will be put out of the country.’ But the criteria sounded unclear and open to legal challenge, as the European Commission lost no time in pointing out. Applications for asylum in the past year fell to 49,370, 41 per cent lower than 12 months earlier, according to Home Office figures, which showed the numbers including dependants falling to 61,050 from 103,080. The cost of the Holyrood building for the Scottish Parliament rose another £30 million to £430 million; original estimates in 1997 for the whole thing were between £10 million

and £40 million. The Metropolitan Police announced a plan to sell off 60 per cent of its police stations for £900 million. MI5 is to increase its staff by 50 per cent to 3,000, seeking employees with a knowledge of Arabic and other languages used by Islamic terrorists. Five British prisoners from a detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, the United States enclave in Cuba, are to be returned to Britain. Hundreds of children taken into ‘care’ after criminal cases in which controversial scientific evidence from expert witnesses was decisive may be returned to their families, Mrs Margaret Hodge, the Minister for children, said; but those taken away and adopted would stay where they were. Miss Elizabeth Winkfield, aged 83, from Westward Ho! in Devon, said she would go to jail rather than pay the 18 per cent increase in council tax out of her state pension.