From Inside the Tent: The King's Speech

The King’s Speech set out 37 Bills, including three in draft form, that the Prime Minister argued would remove “barriers to growth” through resetting relations with the EU and building energy infrastructure, while reforming public services. Keir Starmer promised to “move with greater urgency” as he set out a legislative platform that he hopes will help him shrug off growing calls to resign from his own MPs. 

He will also hope the programme does something to rehabilitate his reputation among the public. Last week’s local election results were dire for Labour – with many voters and Labour MPs citing the Prime Minister’s unpopularity as a key factor. 

In Starmer’s favour, there is real ambition among the bills set out today. They span economic growth, energy and national security, public service reform, immigration, housing and standards in public life. Together they amount to foundational work which – particularly on energy security, economic growth via EU alignment and infrastructure – will benefit business, the economy and consumers in the long term. 

Economic growth is the central thread. The European Partnership Bill strengthens trading ties with the EU, the legislative anchor of the “reset” with Brussels and the most consequential change in the UK-EU economic relationship since the Trade and Cooperation Agreement of 2020. For sectors that have absorbed years of duplicate compliance costs – food and drink, chemicals, life sciences – it opens the door to easier trade and more inward investment. A Late Payments Bill and a Regulating for Growth Bill round out the package: practical measures that small and mid-sized businesses have long argued for.

The infrastructure and energy programme is broader than headlines suggest. The Energy Independence Bill is framed explicitly against the threat from the Middle East – an active drive to scale up homegrown, renewable power so the UK cannot be coerced through, or the economy constrained by, its energy supply. 

A separate Nuclear Regulation Bill, responding to the Nuclear Regulatory Review, makes new reactors more deliverable and practical on a UK timescale. Alongside these sits a Civil Aviation Bill enabling airport expansion, a Highways Bill including the Lower Thames Crossing, a Northern Powerhouse Rail Bill, the creation of Great British Railways, and a Clean Water Bill to clean up the water industry. Taken with last year’s Planning and Infrastructure Act, this is a real supply-side build programme – the part of the Speech with the longest economic tail.

The state’s economic role is being expanded too. The Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill formalises what has already happened in practice and sets a clearer precedent: Ministers will protect strategic capacity rather than allow it to fail. Bills on state threats and cyber security, alongside a National Security Bill responding to the Southport attack, accompany the proposed increase in defence spending. 

On public services the package is significant. The NHS Modernisation Bill aims to strip back bureaucracy and accelerate reform; an Education for All Bill raises school standards and overhauls special educational needs provision; welfare reform will continue in response to the Milburn and Timms Reviews, framed around helping young and disabled people flourish in work; reforms to the police and the courts continue. The Hillsborough Law – a duty of candour for public servants – together with Civil Service reform and a Bill enabling peerages to be removed, signal a clear and overdue push on standards in public life.

There are though some noticeable gaps. The Government’s cost-of-living offer – frozen rail fares, capped bus journey prices, free breakfast clubs and the youth employment package – sits alongside the Speech rather than within it, and given that cost of living remains the public’s first concern, more will be needed. There is nothing here on tackling inflation or helping vulnerable households when food or energy prices spike as the fallout from the Iran war hits, nor is there any attempt to address the long-term challenges of an ageing population, high levels of public borrowing or spiralling welfare and pension costs. 

Social care, the long-running structural weakness of the welfare state, is again absent. The Leasehold Reform Bill caps ground rents and ends new leaseholds but will not take full effect until after the next election. The Immigration and Asylum Bill will divide the parliamentary party and create new tensions with sectors that depend on migrant labour. Politically it will please some voters while repelling others – a fact the Government will need to face up to at some point. 

On defence, the Speech rightly recommits to a sustained increase in spending but says nothing about how it will be paid for — a decision left to the next Budget and one that Rachel Reeves will not find easy given the necessity of remaining within her fiscal rules.

Taken together, the Speech sets out long-term, foundational work that will, if delivered, materially strengthen UK growth, energy security and public services for years to come. It can and will need to go further – on cost of living, on social care, and on the day-to-day pressures voters feel most acutely. But on substance it has earned the right to be taken seriously, and most of what it contains should be welcomed by business and the public alike.

by Mike Buckley, Senior Counsel