The King’s Speech earlier today centred around plans to encourage house building, strengthen worker’s rights and devolve more power to local communities.
A total of 39 bills were announced by King Charles III, including:
Building more houses will be a central focus of the Government’s agenda. The speech included plans to publish a consultation on revising planning laws, compelling councils to determine land needed in their areas to address future housing demands. Additionally, they intend to change the rules surrounding Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects to accelerate the planning permission process.
Starmer’s Government plans to restore and bolster the Renters Reform Bill, abolishing Section 21 “no-fault” evictions and equipping tenants to dispute “unreasonable” rent increases. The party is committed to enhancing housing standards within the sector, such as by expanding Awaab’s Law to cover private rentals.
The ‘Take Back Control Bill’ aims to decentralise authority to local communities, granting mayors and councils control over planning, energy, skills and transport.
The Crime and Policing Bill will establish a “comprehensive ban” on the possession of dangerous knives, referred to as Ronan’s Law. Moreover, the bill includes provisions for increased police powers to seize knives and criminalise the sharing of intimate images without consent. It also introduces “respect orders” to tackle persistent antisocial behaviour among adults, alongside tougher penalties for shoplifting. Furthermore, the bill contains a “neighbourhood policing guarantee” to ensure that each community has a designated officer to handle antisocial behaviour.
Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, is establishing a Border Security Command unit to combat illegal immigration facilitated by criminal gangs. This initiative will integrate intelligence agencies, police, prosecutors, and investigators to target people-smuggling networks. They will be able to use counter-terror tactics, including stop and search power for border officers and the use of mobile device data in prosecutions.
The Home Office will bring back laws to mandate that venues and local authorities safeguard against terrorist threats. This would require venues and local authorities to both undergo training and initiate preventative measures.
The King’s Speech also featured former Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s ban on the purchase of cigarettes for anyone born after 2009 and action on junk food. Reform of the Mental Health Act will aim to reduce the number of people detained and give them greater autonomy over their treatment, as well as confront racial disparities.
The speech introduced the pledged bill that will introduce VAT on private school fees. It is expected that this will not be put into effect until the beginning of the academic year in 2025.
There also featured a skills bill that will remove the apprenticeship levy charged to large firms, to be replaced by a growth and skills levy. Moreover, the bill aims to convert existing further education colleges into specialised colleges of technical excellence.
The Government’s priority is to set up Great British Energy, with a likely budget of £8.3 billion over five years and will intensify investment in green energy projects.
House of Lords reform is a legislative priority for the Government, who propose to abolish the voting rights of the remaining hereditary peers to sit and vote in the second chamber. A democracy bill will allow 16 and 17-year-olds the vote and will also bring in automatic voter registration.
Starmer’s Government will ask the Office for Budget Responsibility to publish independent forecasts of major fiscal events.
The Government has promised a Worker’s Rights Bill within 100 days of office. The King’s Speech incorporated a ban on zero-hours contracts (unless workers opt for them), prohibiting fire and rehire, guaranteeing rights to sick pay and parental leave from day one. However, since full consultation is promised before this becomes law, the precise status of this legislation remains unclear.
The speech also featured Labour’s plans to effectively nationalise the railways over the course of this parliament through the creation of Great British Railways (GBR) which requires primary legislation.
The King’s Speech is the first step for the new Government’s legislative programme that seeks to embed Sir Keir Starmer’s five missions for Government. If there was one main focus of this King’s Speech it was an unashamedly pro-growth agenda that the new Prime Minister and Chancellor will hope brings about the prosperity to deliver other priorities without requiring big tax hikes.
MD of Planning and Communities, Julian Seymour has looked at the implications for development here. It is clear that the Government expects a boom in house building and other development to carry a large part of the burden in delivering some quick economic growth. They are right to judge that there is a lot of low hanging fruit here and plenty of other benefits for the country from a big increase in housebuilding. Even if the reforms do work there will be a time lag of at least two years before the industry is able to get close to the 300,000 a year target.
On energy the commitment to set up Great British Energy is still lacking in detail but that will now be forthcoming once the new parliamentary bill is published. It will be focused on delivering new energy provision that is both cheaper and environmentally cleaner than current sources. Ed Miliband has already set the ball rolling by banning any future exploration for North Sea oil and gas. How this will align with attempts to grow the economy in the short term is yet to be seen but many in the industry are sceptical.
Parts of the British railway network are already in public ownership and those that are not will now follow when the current franchises come to their end. This won’t necessarily cut prices or improve services but our railways require investment and improvement.
There will be changes to the machinery of Government. The Prime Minister and Chancellor have already made clear that they wish to lean on the powers of the existing metro mayors having invited them to Downing Street in their first few days in office. Angela Rayner has also said that areas that are current ‘devolution deserts’ should come forward for new deals. These are likely to include new mayors and there is a high likelihood that in two tier areas this will also mean some degree of local Government reorganisation.
We live in interesting times. Some of the chaos of recent years is already fading into the past but the agenda set out today will require some heavy lifting and for all the support that Keir Starmer will have from his hundreds of MPs in Parliament he will face a good deal of opposition. Whatever the new programme announced today delivers over the next parliamentary session, we won’t be bored.