In normal circumstances, the King’s Speech is an important public opportunity for the government to lay out its legislative agenda for the parliamentary session ahead. But these are not normal circumstances.
The last week has been one of turmoil. First, the two main parties posted historically poor performances at the local and devolved parliamentary elections last week, including Labour losing power in Wales for the first time since the creation of the Senedd. Then, in their wake, multiple ministerial resignations, calls from within the cabinet for the Prime Minister to go, and this afternoon, the resignation of the Health Secretary. (All of which risks obscuring the news that the leader of the party which is consistently ahead in the polls is now under investigation for failing to declare an enormous £5m personal donation…)
In that context, this year’s King’s Speech was somehow both more and less significant that the normal ritual would suggest.
Politically, it was highly significant: an opportunity for Keir Starmer to nail his colours to the mast, reassert his narrative for the country — especially after what was widely seen to be an underwhelming speech on Monday — and convince the Parliamentary Labour Party to back him and his government’s agenda.
Yet in terms of its policy and legislative content, this major announcement — of some 35 potential bills — risked being lost beneath the wider noise. The ‘meat’ of the speech should have been a chance to convince a wider disgruntled electorate of Labour’s capacity to rebuild Britain and to steer the country through an increasingly febrile geopolitical landscape. As Starmer said on Monday, ‘change cannot come quickly enough’. So the question remains: is this an agenda that can deliver it?
While the political significance of the King’s Speech (and its fallout) continue to be pored over, the FGF team have looked at the legislative content itself to see if what has been set out can rise to the challenges we face as a country.
Below we discuss the big questions that emerge. What were the most significant proposals announced? Where does the programme show real ambition? Where does it remain overly cautious? And ultimately, does it promise the kind of transformation required to renew the nation?
The focus on growth and resilience
Perhaps the strongest theme throughout the speech was the idea that government should play a more active role in generating growth, building financial security, and developing long-term resilience. For a country that has seen anaemic growth levels for almost two decades now, and in an increasingly fragmented and fractious international climate, these are fundamental economic questions.
The Regulating Growth Bill reflects the first of these twin focuses. By prioritising pro-growth regulation and strengthening the ‘growth duty’ on regulators, as well as introducing regulatory sandboxes which will allow businesses to innovate and test new ideas, the government has sought to signal a clear direction of travel to state agencies and corporate Britain alike. Similarly, the Competition Reform Bill, which will lighten regulatory interventions and make competition investigations faster and more predictable, cements a wider political narrative on how regulation should interact with economic targets.
The European Partnership Bill builds on this agenda, focusing on improving trade and deepening economic ties with the EU by removing barriers to job creation and economic growth. This new legislation echoes the Prime Minister’s recent calls for greater cooperation with the EU and could yet mark a fundamental shift in British-European relations a decade on from the Brexit referendum.
Alongside these pro-growth measures, the government also sought to strengthen domestic resilience: the framing of ‘economic security, energy security and national security’ was used throughout the speech. This will be advanced through initiatives such as the Energy Independence Bill, which will enable clean energy infrastructure to be built faster, and pave the way for an industrial transition which could secure homegrown renewable energy supplies. Similarly, the Nuclear Regulation Bill and Steel Industry Nationalisation Bill look set to provide further support to strategically important sectors for the clean energy transition, allowing quicker and more cost-effective infrastructural projects to be delivered.
A new relationship between citizen and state?
The King’s Speech also contained legislation that could significantly change the make up of vital institutions and deliver better public services, reshaping the relationship between citizen and state.
The NHS Modernisation Bill, for example, promises to abolish NHS England, and will focus on ‘embedding patient voice’ within the formulation of national health policy, as well as strengthening local democratic accountability within health systems. This institutional shift towards local voice and regional autonomy is a welcome change, and something FGF called for in our Mission Critical 04 report.
On top of this, the government unveiled the long-awaited Representation of the People Bill. This landmark – and at times, hotly contested – piece of legislation looks to strengthen democratic integrity and widen political enfranchisement by giving 16 and 17 year olds the right to vote. The accompanying focus on Automatic Voter Registration (AVR) could be another game changer in terms of boosting public participation, with a potential 8m people added to the electoral register.
The government also committed to introducing a Digital Access to Services Bill, which will create the legal framework by which digital IDs will be created and used. Designed to make it easier to prove one’s identity when accessing public services, the IDs could improve the often dire integration of public services, leading to significant savings, efficiencies and quality.
The devil in the detail
Despite many of the ambitious legislative changes discussed above, they are not worth the paper they’re written on without a clear and robust plan for delivery. On this, there is still work to be done.
Take AVR, for example – there are still major unanswered questions surrounding how this ambitious policy will actually be implemented. Its success rests largely on the extent to which the civil service can join up the thicket of datasets spanning different departments (at both national and local level) to correctly identify eligible voters. The government’s end goal with AVR might be laudable; their plan, at this stage, seems a little lacking.
The Railways and Passenger Benefits Bill — the new name for the bill which will nationalise the railway — faces a similar set of questions. Much of what will determine the long-term success of public ownership sits beyond the scope of the bill itself. There are highly consequential questions which still need to be answered: about the financial settlement to be agreed with the Treasury, the terms of the new Long-Term Rail Strategy, how the new ‘directing mind’ of Great British Railways (GBR) will be held to account, as well as how the government intends to balance the creation of a new centralised GBR with the trend towards ever more autonomy at local and regional level. We’ll have to wait for further clarity on each, and we hope to support government thinking on these with our upcoming report on how to set GBR up for success.
There was also a notable omission from the speech, especially given it had a whole section dedicated to ‘ending the opportunity crisis’ and ‘a Britain built for all’. The anticipated Equality (Race and Disability) Bill, which would have introduced mandatory ethnicity and disability pay gap reporting for larger employers, was conspicuous by its absence. The decision was likely motivated by concern over the response from business; however, given that disabled people remain twice as likely to be out of work, and those from global majority backgrounds continue to experience significantly higher unemployment rates, this feels at odds with the government’s rhetoric and its wider focus on driving full economic participation (aside from the obvious negative implications for racial and social equality).
Beyond individual cases, there is also a wider question on the mechanics of delivery which went unaddressed via a specific piece of legislation yesterday, but where there were encouraging noises: how to reform Whitehall to ensure efficient and effective delivery across the government’s wide-ranging programme.
As FGF has consistently highlighted, the modern British state has become an obstacle to delivery in its own right. This is neither the fault of Machiavellian political advisers, nor antiquated ‘Sir Humphrey’-esque civil servants, but something more systemic, and thus harder to crack. Any well-intentioned legislative push to renew the nation — even in more benign political circumstances than these — will require fundamental transformation of the state, and that requires political will and institutional bravery.
The current starting point may be inauspicious, with high profile departures of senior civil servants in recent months putting the relationship between elected ministers and Whitehall officialdom in the spotlight and under strain. However, the reference yesterday to ‘proposals that strengthen the delivery, accountability, innovation and productivity of the Civil Service [and] that will also seek to safeguard its impartiality and core values, to enhance trust and confidence in the institutions of government’, is potentially the most important part of the King’s Speech.
If serious effort and goodwill is put into making good on those words, then the laudable level of ambition embodied in the wider legislative programme set out yesterday might just be achievable. It is, however, a big ‘if’.
