UK Election: the King’s Speech – what are the new government’s legislative priorities?

The King’s Speech and the State Opening of the UK Parliament took place today with the legislative priorities of the new Labour government for the first parliamentary session being unveiled. Whilst literally spoken by the King himself, the speech is written by the government and outlines its plans. The full text of the King’s Speech is available here. You can read the Background Materials here (which includes announcements of more bills than are directly referenced in the Speech). 

Some 40 bills were announced on a wide range of constitutional, social, political and economic issues, and it is not practical to list them all out.  For businesses operating in the UK, the more notable bills were as follows (with the government’s headline aim for each bill): 

• Arbitration Bill – to support more efficient dispute resolution, attract international legal business, and promote UK economic growth;
• Bank Resolution (Recapitalisation) Bill – to enhance the UK’s resolution regime, providing the Bank of England with a more flexible toolkit to respond to the failure of small banks;
• Budget Responsibility Bill – to ensure that all significant tax and spending changes are subject to an independent assessment by the Office for Budget Responsibility; 
• Cyber Security and Resilience Bill – to strengthen the UK’s cyber defences, ensure that critical infrastructure and the digital services that companies rely on are secure;
• Digital Information and Smart Data Bill – to ensure the UK harnesses the power of data for economic growth, to support a modern digital government, and to improve people’s lives;
• Draft Audit Reform and Corporate Governance Bill & Pension Schemes Bill – to strengthen audit and corporate governance, alongside provisions on pension investment, options at retirement and scheme consolidation;
• Employment Rights Bill – to introduce a new deal for working people to ban exploitative practices and enhance employment rights;
• Great British Energy Bill – to set up Great British Energy, a publicly owned clean power company headquartered in Scotland, which will help accelerate investment in renewable energy such as offshore wind;
• Hillsborough Bill – to introduce a statutory duty of candour for public servants and authorities across government, to increase transparency regarding failures in public service delivery;
• Passenger Railway Services (Public Ownership) Bill & Rail Reform Bill – to improve the railways by reforming rail franchising, establishing Great British Railways and bringing train operators into public ownership; 
• Planning and Infrastructure Bill – to accelerate the delivery of high quality infrastructure and housing; and
• Product Safety and Metrology Bill – to preserve the UK’s status as a global leader in product regulation, supporting businesses and protecting consumers.

While there had been some speculation that AI would feature, there was no specific bill proposed on AI regulation, although reference was made to seeking “to establish the appropriate legislation to place requirements on those working to develop the most powerful artificial intelligence models”.

The Speech represents an ambitious programme of legislation for this parliamentary session. Readers of the Labour manifesto will recognise the conversion of many of those commitments into draft bills. It is also interesting to see how the bills have been categorised under the “Missions” for government – which continues a theme of the Labour campaign into government. 

We await the full text of the bills mentioned, when it will be seen how closely the provisions mirror the commitments made in the manifesto. Also on the horizon is a Budget – anticipated in the Autumn – where we will see more detail on Labour’s tax plans.

Please look out for further blogs as we take a deeper dive into the bills affecting specific sectors.