Portrait of the week: Covid fines, cancelled flights and sunflower oil shortages

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Jonathan Reynolds, Labour’s business spokesman, said that the government should be preparing for energy rationing, but Grant Shapps, the Transport Secretary ruled it out. Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, asked the British Geological Survey to reassess the effects of fracking, Essex police arrested 192 people from Just Stop Oil in a weekend of protest at oil refineries. By the end of March, 4,700 visas had been issued from 32,200 applications to sponsor accommodation for Ukrainian refugees; under the family visa scheme, 24,400 had been issued from 32,800 applications. Britain’s biggest bottler of sunflower oil had stocks for only three weeks left and said that food manufacturers were turning to rape.

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Among those so far issued with fixed penalties by the Metropolitan Police for breaching coronavirus regulations at Downing Street was Helen MacNamara, the former head of ethics in the Cabinet Office, and Kate Josephs, a former director-general of the Cabinet Office Covid-19 Taskforce. In the seven days up to 4 April, 1,118 people had died with coronavirus, bringing total deaths (within 28 days of testing positive) to 165,789. In the previous week 992 had died. Numbers with Covid remaining in hospital in the United Kingdom rose from about 18,000 to about 20,000. The managing director of Manchester Airport resigned after weeks of delays making some travellers miss their flights. EasyJet and British Airways cancelled dozens of flights a day as staff were off with Covid.

Jamie Wallis, the Conservative MP for Bridgend, who suddenly announced last week that his ambition was to transition to a female gender, said he was ‘bitterly disappointed’ at the government’s decision not to criminalise dissuasion of those wishing to change gender when it introduces new laws against attempts to convert homosexual people from their sexuality.