Portrait of the week: A parliamentary arrest, a Morocco earthquake and a yoga ‘mass killing’ 

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Average wages (including bonuses) in the three months to July were 8.5 per cent higher than a year earlier. This should mean that state pensions rise by 8.5 per cent from April 2024, if the government does not claw back anything; the predicted rise would bring into the tax-paying bracket 650,000 more pensioners, a total of 9.15 million. GDP fell by 0.5 per cent in July. Wilko shops began closing as attempts to rescue the chain failed; Poundland offered to take on the leases of up to 71 shops. The cost of a first-class stamp is to rise from £1.10 to £1.25; before April this year it was only 95p. Bernard Looney resigned as chief executive of BP over a matter of personal relationships. A government auction for contracts for new offshore wind farms brought not a single bid. Britain rejoined the Horizon scientific research scheme after reaching an agreement with the European Union. Britain enjoyed temperatures above 30°C for seven days running. In England, 19 schools had delayed the start of the new school year because of the presence of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac) in their structure. Police alerted to a ‘mass murder’ at Chapel St Leonards, Lincolnshire, found it was a yoga class in session.

A parliamentary researcher was arrested in March under the Official Secrets Act, it emerged, and was granted bail. The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, met Li Qiang, the Chinese Premier, at the G20 summit in India, and ‘conveyed his significant concerns about Chinese interference in the UK’s parliamentary democracy’. The arrested suspect said: ‘I have spent my career to date trying to educate others about the challenge and threats presented by the Chinese Communist party.’

Daniel Khalife, 21, a former soldier on remand accused of trying to gather information for a hostile state, escaped, strapped to the underside of a delivery lorry, from Wandsworth Prison, where he was working in the kitchen.