Portrait of the week: Braverman on migration, Burnham on HS2 and police on AI

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Dozens of armed police in London laid down their guns after a Metropolitan Police officer was charged with the murder of Chris Kaba, 24, shot in Streatham Hill last year. The army stood by, but enough policemen returned to armed duties to make Military Aid to the Civil Authorities unnecessary. Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, backed some sort of review of armed policing guidelines ordered by Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, which Downing Street said was expected to conclude by the end of the year. Mrs Braverman warned separately that as many as 780 million people will be eligible to claim asylum without radical reform of rules based on the UN Refugee Convention; ‘Simply being gay, a woman or fearful of discrimination’ was now effectively enough to qualify for protection, she said.

Regulators approved the exploitation of the Rosebank oilfield, 80 miles west of Shetland, estimated to contain 500 million barrels of oil. The costs of the HS2 railway project had been getting ‘totally out of control’, Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said; Mr Sunak was said to be alarmed at the cost rising above £100 billion. But Andy Burnham, the Mayor of Greater Manchester, said that scrapping the legs north of Birmingham was ‘a recipe for the north-south divide to become a north-south chasm’. Through a computer bungle, Newcastle Hospitals failed to send out 24,000 letters from senior doctors to patients and their GPs, some detailing necessary care. More than a million NHS treatments and appointments had been cancelled in England due to strikes, NHS England announced. British workers took an average of 7.8 sick days in the past year, compared with 5.8 before the Covid pandemic; the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development, which commissioned the study, said that some people took sick leave through worry about not having enough money to pay the bills.

Rupert Murdoch, aged 92, said he was to resign as chairman of News Corp and Fox, while remaining chairman emeritus; his son Lachlan is to head both companies.