New Beginnings, Crawley Observer Column, Wednesday 25th July 2024

Today marks one week since the first King’s—or Queen’s—Speech by a Labour Government in 14 years. The King’s Speech is the centrepiece of the State Opening of Parliament, setting out the laws the Government intends to pass over the following session, with each session lasting roughly a year.

Journalists have commented about how speeches have become increasingly thin over recent years. No risk of that this week, the last time this number of bills were announced in one go was under the last Labour Government.

At its core, the speech committed to improving living standards in the UK by delivering the first serious economic growth since the Banking Crisis. There are laws to change how the Bank of England responds to failing financial institutions, new rules for preventing Liz Truss-style reckless budgeting, the creation of a National Wealth Fund, and changes to planning and pension management to help drive greater economic growth.

For growth to be meaningful, everyone has to benefit, which is why we’re improving employment rights to ban exploitative practices and help people get a better deal at work, alongside creating a new skills body to ensure people get the training they need to prosper, free breakfast clubs at every primary school, and new rights for renters.

We’re moving ahead on enabling railway routes to return to public ownership as their franchises expire, establishing Great British Energy to deliver publicly-owned clean energy, and handing water regulators the power to clean up our waterways, amongst much more.

As the King’s Speech only tackles the legislative-side of a Government’s agenda, broader questions over public spending will have to wait until the publication of the Budget in the Autumn, although it is becoming increasingly apparent every day that the true state of public finances was worse than Rishi Sunak was prepared to admit, leaving some very tough decisions over what needs to be prioritised until economic growth takes effect.

Despite this, the speech was an enormously ambitious set of proposals for delivering change for the UK and I look forward to playing my part in helping to pass them.