Portrait of the week | 7 February 2013

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The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill was given its second reading in the Commons by 400 votes to 175. Of Conservative MPs, 127 voted for it, and 136 against. David Cameron, who did not attend the debate, called the result ‘an important step forward’. The bill does not apply to Scotland, which has its own plans, or to Northern Ireland, which does not. A provision of the bill prohibits the Church of England and the Church in Wales from conducting same-sex weddings, which are against canon law (itself part of English law). On the day of the confirmation of his election as Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Revd Justin Welby said: ‘I support the Church of England’s position on this.’ Europol said that a Champions League match played in England was among 380 European matches suspected of having been fixed; a Danish paper said it was Liverpool’s 1-0 win over Debrecen, the Hungarian team, in 2009. Horsemeat was found by the Food Standards Agency at a Freeza Meats cold store in Newry, Co. Down.

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrat politician, and energy secretary until last year, pleaded guilty to perverting the course of justice over allegations that his ex-wife, Vicky Pryce, took speeding points for him in 2003. He resigned as MP for Eastleigh, Hampshire. Bitter text messages to him from his son, when aged 18, were published. The trial of Mrs Pryce on similar charges continued. About 250,000 Twitter users’ passwords were stolen by hackers along with other data. Government wine-cellars, run by the Foreign Office, sold £44,000 of stock as part of their programme of running as a self-financing unit.

George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said regulators would have the power to split up any bank deemed to be undermining the separation of high-street banking from riskier investment operations; this provision is known as ‘electrification of the ring-fence’.