Portrait of the week | 3 July 2010

The government’s committee on public expenditure, otherwise known as Pex or the Star Chamber, gave departments a month to come up with spending cuts of up to 33 per cent.

The government’s committee on public expenditure, otherwise known as Pex or the Star Chamber, gave departments a month to come up with spending cuts of up to 33 per cent. Mr George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said he would spend the summer seeking ways to reduce welfare spending in order to cushion the cuts in other areas. Mr Ken Clarke, the Justice Secretary, proposed fewer short jail sentences, which were ‘costly and ineffective’. Sir Hugh Orde, the president of the Association of Chief Police Officers said that, to preserve essential policing tasks in the face of spending cuts, ‘We must guard against the understandable demand for more and more officers on the street.’ The handling by the Metropolitan Police of the case of Kirk Reid, who sexually assaulted dozens of women, was ‘shameful’ said the Independent Police Complaints Commission; a witness reported one assault in 2004 and gave the registration of Reid’s car, but nothing was done for four years. Mrs Theresa May, the Home Secretary, announced an immediate limit of 24,100 work visas for non-European Union migrants before next April, a cut of 1,300; most of the 500,000 who entered Britain last year were returning Britons, EU citizens or dependants of migrants. Money from the taxpayer for the Prince of Wales fell from £3 million to £1.6 million last year; he paid £3.5 million tax (up from £3.1 million) and, with the Duchess of Cornwall, undertook 755 public engagements.

The BBC is to reduce the increase of pensionable salary for its staff to 1 per cent a year, in response to a £2 billion pension deficit.