The King attended the House of Lords on Wednesday to officially open the next session of Parliament and deliver a speech setting out the Government’s agenda for its first term.
The speech included a range of measures to promote growth, reform planning, protect workers rights, nationalise the railways and create a new publicly-owned energy company.
Here, we take a look at some of the key measures which were missing from Sir Keir Starmer’s first agenda for Government.
Voter reform and votes at 16
In its election manifesto, Labour had pledged to lower the voting age to 16, but this measure did not feature in the King’s Speech.
It had also been reported that the new Government would bring in automatic voter registration to address the nearly 8 million people missing or incorrectly recorded on the electoral roll.
This too was missing from the party’s plan for Government, but the Prime Minister had hinted ahead of the speech that his “priority is absolutely economic growth and everything will be focused on that in the early days”.
It suggests that less essential policies such as voter reform have been pushed further down the line so that more key economic measures can be brought in.
Age cap on peers
Labour said ahead of the election it had a long-term plan to replace the House of Lords with an elected upper chamber, but the manifesto made clear that only minor changes would be made during their first term in power.
The King’s Speech included a bill which would abolish the remaining hereditary peers in the Lords, but there was no mention of the promised policy of bringing in an upper age limit of 80-years-old for peers.
This was a key manifesto commitment, but the Government had made clear that those over 80 would only be required to retire at the end of this parliament, which means minister still have time to bring the new rule into effect.
Migration measures
The King’s Speech does include a new bill aimed at promoting border security. However, it does not contain a bill to put into action the plan to ensure companies in industries with high numbers of migrant workers put in place workforce plans to address skills shortages,
This is understood to be because Home Secretary Yvette Cooper intends to carry out more work to develop a framework around this.
The speech also did not include any mention of reported plans to ban firms who breach employment law by hiring workers overseas.
Benefits reform
While the King’s Speech commitment “to get people back in employment following the impact of the pandemic,” it included no specific laws on welfare reform.
The Labour Party said prior to the election that the welfare system would need “big changes”, but there was no specific detail in the manifesto on what these would be. The party is also committed to “reviewing universal credit so that it makes work pay and tackles poverty”.
It is understood that the new Government will target job centres and benefit assessments under the party’s plans to get more disabled people into work, but no details of this have yet been set out.
Artificial intelligence
It had been reported that the King’s Speech would include a new artificial intelligence (AI) bill to create binding rules to govern its development.
However, this was not featured in the programme of legislation, though plans to regulate artificial intelligence were mentioned under the Product Safety and Metrology Bill, which is focused on the UK’s regulatory framework.
Though there was no specific bill, the speech did include a pledge to “harness the power of artificial intelligence as we look to strengthen safety frameworks”.
Banning disposable vapes
The King’s Speech revived the previous administration’s plans to heavily restrict the marketing of vapes alongside plans to ban smoking for anyone born after 1 January 2009.
Not mentioned in the speech, however, was the ban on disposable vapes which had been put forward in January by the Conservative government.
It is unclear whether it is still the Government’s position for these vapes to be banned amid concerns over their contribution on youth vaping and their environmental impact.